Making waves at Mobile World Congress 2019 this week, Ericsson is showcasing an award-winning Smart Vessel industrial use case – operating remotely on commercial 4G broadband. The use case is a joint development of Ericsson, China Mobile and OceanAlpha.
Ericsson has revealed an award-winning industrial use case at Mobile World Congress 2019 this week, demonstrating the first steps of how 4G and 5G connectivity can benefit our planet and improve society.
The use case, a Broadband IoT Smart Vessel, demonstrates an unmanned vessel operating remotely over a 4G network. Showcased as part of Ericsson’s evolved Cellular IoT solution, the smart vessel harnesses the increased capacity and lower latency of forthcoming networks to perform operations in almost real time.
Following pre-defined GPS routers, the vessel operates autonomously – collecting water quality monitoring data, identifying the cause of the pollutant with HD cameras and taking necessary measures to address these pollutants. The smart vessel can be remotely steered to the desired location in a pollution or accident area for close monitoring and takes necessary actions to overcome pollutants.
This use case – running on a commercial 4G network – has been jointly developed with China Mobile and OceanAlpha, the leading and largest unmanned surface vessel company in the world. The remotely-controlled machine is just one example of the billions of smart devices which are widely expected to be enabled by 5G over the coming years.
Chris Houghton, SVP & Head of Market Area North East Asia at Ericsson, says: “At Ericsson, we’ve set our vision for the evolution of cellular IoT. As demonstrated with the Cellular IoT vessel demo at MWC, our new offerings within cellular IoT will enable service providers to address a larger part of the IoT market – with more advanced use cases, across multiple industries. We’ve also enhanced our Massive IoT offerings which, together with new Broadband IoT solutions, are designed to leverage new capabilities across 4G and 5G – connecting service providers with new growth opportunities in industry digitalization.”
Jie Zheng, General Manager of China Mobile Zhejiang Company, says: “Growth in cellular IoT connectivity is expected to accelerate as industries digitalize. We see a big opportunity to expand our existing business beyond mobile broadband. We’ve sustained momentum in the IoT space with heightened 4G capabilities and are prepared for 5G enhancements when they come.”
Earlier this year, Ericsson unveiled the next steps in the evolution of cellular IoT and launched new solutions that will enable service providers to address a larger part of the IoT market with diverse use cases across multiple industries.
In November 2018, at the United Nations “World Geospatial Information Congress (UNWGIS)” in China, Ericsson recently jointly won with China Mobile the award for Most Popular 5G application for its demo: 5G unmanned river cleaning vessel.
