Successful completion of 5G!Drone Trials in Athens

September 5-8: By leveraging Athens 5G platform, Unmanned Life successfully completed the trials and experiments conducted in the Egaleo stadium (Athens) as part of the 5G!Drone project. 

5G!Drones aims to trial several UAV use-cases covering eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC 5G services, and to validate 5G KPIs for supporting such challenging use-cases. Along with other consortium members, Unmanned Life has been a part of this project since the start as leaders of WP4. As a software platform company that unlocks the full potential of robotics, Unmanned Life’s role was to autonomously deploy drones on 5G network to provide WiFi to the crowd present in Egaleo stadium.

The trials were spread across three days where Unmanned Life showcased its use-case of connectivity extension in the stadium and at events held by 5G!Drones. The purpose of this scenario was to demonstrate how UAVs can improve connectivity services in a highly crowded environment through 5G network capabilities e.g. during large events.  

The concept relies on providing end-to-end dedicated and reliable communication, targeting specific user groups such as the event organizers to supervise and manage large events in an unhindered manner. At the same time, and with the proper sizing of the deployed solution in terms of capacity, the connectivity services can also be offered to the spectators. 

6Th September 

On the first day of 5G!Drone trials in Egaleo stadium (Athens), Tech members from Unmanned life evaluated the field and started working on the integration and network testing. 3 tests were carried out to measure the latency with Cosmotool with a few short flights with “Cosmote 5G signal enhancing van». The day ended with a social dinner between the consortium members where we interacted with other partners and got to know them better.  

7th September 

On the second day, our team continued testing different missions and flight scenarios with other partners. Interface was adapted and data for KPI on network parameters was collected. This was an important day for Unmanned Life as most of the testing was done together with Cosmote. Public safety was of utmost importance which is why a detailed discussion of safety measures and procedures happened in preparation for the public event next day. 

8Th September 

On September 8th the 5G!Drones showcasing event took place in front of the public! It started at 10:30 local time on Egaleo’s stadium and in Municipality’s innovation hub! The day started with presentations and then all attendees got a chance to watch drone trials and experiments by Unmanned Life and 5G!Drones partners! 

We successfully showcased our autonomous drone deployment, leveraging 5G network to capture data for ourselves and other partners. For this use-case we flew with different payloads.  

• For the purpose of gathering data while flying, a device from one of our partners, Cosmote, was mounted on the drone and performed various flights as requested. 
• A WiFi router was used on the drone to provide WiFi 6 connectivity to crowds. This was trialled with the people who attended the event and successfully connected their phones with the WiFi.

The trials in Athens for 5G!Drones may have ended, but there is still outstanding work that needs to be done. The testing and data still need to be processed by Unmanned Life to gain some KPIs on the network performance. Once completed this will be shared with all the consortium members.  

5G!Drones has been a complicated and one of the longest projects, but thanks to the support provided by consortium members and the resilience and hard work of Unmanned Life’s team, it would be sufficient to say that we have successfully ended the trials in Athens!  

Until next time! 

About Unmanned Life: Unmanned Life is changing the way robots are being deployed by providing seamless orchestration of autonomous robotics with its Autonomy-as-a-Service software platform. Unmanned Life integrates different technologies. Such as AI, 5G, and Edge computing with multiple robots, like drones and/or autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and a variety of capabilities to enable autonomous robotics operations across multiple industries in particular, Industry 4.0 and Smart Cities.