UM Hits The Factories Of The Future (FoF) Market

Unmanned Life has been selected to be a part of EVOLVED 5G project: a consortium of 21 partners from Europe that will come together to contribute towards the 5G penetration in smart manufacturing by designing, developing, validating and publishing innovative NetApps. The project further aims to increase the scientific impact and the business potential from the expected integration of 5G in Factories of Future (FoF) settings.

Unmanned Life’s Autonomy-as-a-Service platform addresses the problems related to fleet orchestration via a centralized control platform which can manage multiple autonomous systems simultaneously. Due to its open platform approach, our solution fits well to the FoF environment by enabling collaboration between different robotic systems. Additionally, our platform allows the extension of robot functionalities with sensors, hence bringing together the heterogenous robotic ecosystem with the ability to solve complex tasks.

“EVOLVED-5G seeks to revolutionize the way industry 4.0-related startups and SMEs exploit capabilities of 5G networks and build digitalized, secure, smart and automated industrial operations. Indeed, EVOLVED-5G endorses the European Union’s vision of NetApps (i.e. Network Applications able to consume 3GPP native APIs as well as other telco assets) by developing 11 new use case-tailored functions as NetApps in the smart manufacturing sector and will contribute towards the fourth industrial revolution by implementing an ecosystem of NetApps that will eventually provide means and grounds for the final integration of 5G in future factories. Thanks to Unmanned Life’s interoperable approach, we will be to able test the orchestration of different operation systems controlled from one centralized platform.”

Javier Rodrigo García, Project Coordinator EVOLVED-5G

The number of 5G networks in the European region continue to increase and 5G is presently available in around 26 EU countries. A lot of advancements in 5G networks are also foreseen this year. The recent efforts on 5G R&D activities in Europe have facilitated the opportunity to leverage capabilities developed through projects like EVOLVED-5G. In particular, new technologies can be exploited by third party innovators and SMEs, such as Unmanned Life, to create a new, open and dynamic ecosystem from both technological and marketing perspectives.

UML will collaborate with PAL Robotics in developing a NetApp that will allow an Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) fleet to localize in indoor industrial environments and use a centralized command centre to deploy these assets over 5G and EDGE infrastructures for logistics-based use-cases. The goal of this will be to minimize the heavy reliance on labour in the field of logistics services by reducing associated costs and time of moving packages over short distances in 5G-enabled warehouses and factories.

From a strategical point of view, the good geographical balance makes the EVOLVED-5G consortium capture the diverse necessities that emerge from various markets and cultures across the world and brings a unique opportunity to Unmanned Life for expanding its horizons.

The EVOLVED-5G consortium is built around the following principle: “Bringing together heterogeneous players, with the required expertise and background in 5G technologies and a set of SMEs related to a targeted vertical industry”.

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.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101016608.