Verizon, Newlab reveal 2022 5G Studio results

Verizon and Newlab have announced the results of the fourth cohort of startups in the 5G Studio. The 5G Studio was launched by Verizon’s New Business Incubation team and Newlab in 2020.

The Studio supports selected startups in developing advanced technologies that can leverage Verizon’s Ultra Wideband 5G network and mobile edge compute capabilities at Newlab. This year’s cohort concluded in June and featured startups transforming industrial automation by using 5G technology and intelligent software to efficiently modernize legacy manufacturing systems.

"Verizon empowers today's startups to test, explore and build the technology of tomorrow," said Elise Neel, SVP of New Business Incubation at Verizon. "5G has the power to revolutionize manufacturing and industrial automation through the ability to increase efficiency, de-risk change and battle inflationary pressures.”

“The stellar results of this year’s 5G Studio cohort underscore the role of the highly connected 5G future in transforming industrial automation and creating resilient supply chains,” said Satish Rao, Chief Product Officer of Newlab. “We’re thrilled to have worked alongside Verizon in enabling leading technologists and entrepreneurs to test and scale world-changing ideas to create real solutions with potentially far-reaching impact.”

Additional information about the companies and the results achieved through the 5G Studio is included below:

alwaysAI & Ant Robotics collaborated in the 5G Studio’s first ever joint pilot. alwaysAI is an end-to-end advanced computer vision platform, enabling faster computer vision application development and deployment on the edge.

alwaysAI & Ant Robotics tested alwaysAI’s smart object avoidance solution in conjunction with Ant Robotics’ autonomous mobile robot designed to move pallets. This collaboration enabled the robot to detect different objects and human signals, and analyze and determine which action it should take in near real-time over the 5G network and mobile edge compute platform. alwaysAI also tested a retail use-case overlay on the common area of Newlab’s Brooklyn headquarters which simulated crowd zone tracking and occupancy to improve speed and quality of service.

Cleo Robotics is a Boston-based company specializing in developing unconventional robotic systems equipped with cutting-edge sensing to collect critical data in GPS-denied, dangerous, and difficult to reach areas. Their goal is to eliminate manned entry of people into dangerous, hazardous and difficult to reach environments.

Cleo Robotics leveraged 5G to remotely operate their drone with extreme low latency inside Newlab’s warehouse, while processing an object detection AI algorithm provided by Cohort 3 member IronYun, in the 5G Studio’s first collaboration between companies across cohorts. The algorithm was processed using mobile edge compute to run inspection and detect faults in warehouses, allowing the drone, equipped with LIDAR and 4K camera, to navigate in tight places that are nearly unreachable for a human inspector.

Ottonomy makes fully autonomous delivery robots providing contactless deliveries of food and retail items in both indoor and outdoor environments, with a goal of reducing costs while improving efficiency and user experience.

Ottonomy used 5G to demonstrate a seamless and accurate delivery of a food order while processing location and object detection on Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength, rather than locally on their delivery bot. Besides maintaining low latency and accuracy, Ottonomy leveraged 5G to reduce onboard compute on the Ottobots delivery robots and pushed near-real time processing of perception and localization modules on the AWS Wavelength cloud. This also enables Ottobots to have higher scalability for large fleet deployments, which improves efficiency for increasing more compute capabilities while improving long battery life.

This year’s 5G Studio follows successful Studios from the last three years, which saw the testing of transformative technologies across mobility, energy and industrial automation.