Researchers from Lakeside Labs are helping to improve communication between drones and robots on the ground.
That swarms of Robots complete tasks together and coordinate yourself in the process is an idea that has been around for a long time. In the Lakeside Labs in Klagenfurt, research is being carried out into which technologies this type of communication could be put into practice. The jury of futurezone Awards 2022 has convinced this. For the project “Use Case Communication in Swarms” Lakeside Labs became the award in the category 5G Innovation of the Year – powered by Huawei presented.
Use in disaster operations
According to project manager Christian Raffelsberger, the concrete benefits of communicating robot swarms could open up in disaster scenarios. Drones could do that from the air, for example explore affected areawhile robot on the ground deliver relief supplies or support an evacuation.
Dynamic bandwidth requirements
Am 5G Playground Carinthia, which is supported by mobile operator A1, trials have been conducted. It turned out that normally only small amounts of data have to be transferred between the robots. If necessary, however, the required bandwidth increases rapidly, for example when live images of missing people or dangerous situations are transmitted. the 5G network requirements are therefore dynamic and may also be different for different swarm members.
Unlike other technologies commonly used to control drones, such as WiFi or Bluetooth, it comes in one cellular network with a licensed frequency range less disruption. 5G has also been developed for higher device densities developed.
challenges identified
However, challenges also emerged from the project: 5G networks are currently still on one use on the ground, not in the air, optimized. Due to the frequent changing of radio cells and the connection between each individual drone and several cell towers, it can also lead to interference come. In any case, the goal of the project, to gain new insights into the use of 5G for communication in robot swarms, was sufficiently achieved.
The other nominees
The following two projects made it into the Top 3 of the nominees for the futurezone Award in the category 5G Innovation of the Year – powered by Huawei: The Alpen-Adria University of Klagenfurt improved in their project Use Case Virtual Realities the transmission of panorama videos for VR glasses.
The intelligent vise 5G Autoclamp von TU Vienna and three optimizes the processing of workpieces with numerous sensors and a 5G connection to machines.