A remote controlled standard car, HD virtual tourism, smart city solutions to optimise public services, industrial robotics and drones to monitor the environment: these are the main innovative services that see 5G take another step forward in Turin, showing itself off to the general public through a series of “live” demos staged today and tomorrow at Palazzo Madama and Piazza Castello opposite.
The new frontiers of fifth generation mobile technology were presented by the Councillor for Innovation & Smart City of the City of Turin, Paola Pisano, the Chief Technology Officer of TIM, Elisabetta Romano, the Head of Strategy, Innovation & Customer Experience of TIM, Mario Di Mauro, the Chief Executive Officer of Ericsson Italia, Federico Rigoni, and the Councillor for Production Activities, Innovation and Research of Regione Piemonte, Giuseppina De Santis. For this occasion TIM, in collaboration with Ericsson, has switched on in Piazza Castello the first 5G antenna with millimetre waves in an Italian historical centre, once again confirming Turin’s role as a pioneering city at global level in digital technological innovation.
This is the first event in Italy open to the public at which everyone can learn about and test the potential of the new 5G network through services that will soon be available thanks to the hard work of TIM, which was awarded, for 2.4 billion euros, the best 5G frequencies put up for sale by the Ministry for Economic Development. The initiative strengthens TIM’s leadership in new technology at an advanced development stage with many activities undertaken nationally and in the Republic of San Marino, leveraging a network of over 75 partners of excellence, including 8 university and research centres, 40 large enterprises and 16 public administrations. Thanks to this ecosystem, the company is developing more than 70 use cases in over 10 application areas that will improve the daily life of citizens, consumers, businesses and public administration in the next few years, with an ever increasing number of digital services.
The first driverless car controlled remotely over the 5G network is the crowning jewel of the many application areas made possible by the new mobile ultrabroadband technology. This system, by receiving all the information on the surrounding environment, allows a person to control the vehicle making it move remotely.
In more detail the demo, performed by TIM in collaboration with Objective Software, will take place in an area inside Palazzo Madama where the remote control station will be positioned with access to the relative video flows from outside and in an outside area in Piazza Castello where the car will move. Visitors positioned in front of the station will be able to observe or experience driving the car moving in a protected square’s area by remote control or they can watch the vehicle live moving outside independently.
The control platform inside the car collects in real time multimedia data and content from the various sensors, video cameras and radars installed, which is then transmitted to the remote station taking advantage of the extreme reliability and security of the 5G network in terms of bandwidth to transmit the vehicle’s video flow and latency in sending the data provided. In the coming months this application will enable the start of the Smart Road project to test self-driving cars on a larger scale in some protected areas of the city.
Moreover Intel will show a 5G PC prototype on the 5G network, reflecting the progress that has been made to integrate these advanced wireless connectivity technologies into portable PCs. Intel technology will be at the heart of many other applications on display at Palazzo Madama where there are other 4 corners dedicated to 5G network applications for use in other areas of people’s daily lives.
Drones: in the drone corner an important application linked to environmental monitoring and developed in collaboration with Seikey can be seen; in this specific case this is the control of TIM’s base transceiver stations using different methods, even in real time on the 5G network in order to facilitate maintenance of these structures that are difficult to access. Furthermore, TIM has a research project in progress with the aim of transforming Turin into the first city with a Drone-Ready network.
Industry 4.0: thanks to collaboration with Comau, a Mobile Training Cell was set up in which a simulator (Digital Twin) reproduces the movements of a real robot arm in 3D on a monitor over a 5G connection. The new technology allows one to interconnect, exchange data and manage industrial systems remotely, ensuring greater efficiency, reliability and security with respect to the traditional wired/wireless networks, as well as to significantly improve the production cycle. Moreover, thanks to collaboration with Altran, an AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) solution was created for transportation vehicles inside factories and warehouses.
Smart City: the Smart City Control Room in Turin will be presented, which enables integrated access to various 5G services for the city, such as: smart traffic, smart parking, smart lighting, smart waste, smart bench, smart green and smart environment. In particular, the smart parking and smart lighting services were created by Olivetti on TIM’s new NB-IoT 5G network. This network enables the deployment of numerous IoT (Internet of Things) services at a low cost and with high replicability. This corner, in collaboration with the Police of Turin, also presents an advanced mobile video surveillance solution which can send video and information data content in real time over the mobile 5G network to a remote Safety Control Centre. The solution represents the evolution of TIM’s smartphone-based mobile video surveillance towards the use of new devices supplied to law enforcement, such as Body Cams and other wearables.
Digital Tourism: visitors can enjoy a tour of Pietro Micca Galleries in a totally immersive way through the use of Virtual Reality glasses and they will be able to interact with a museum’s real guide and explore areas currently not accessible to the public.
“Turin once again bets on innovation, confirming its role as ‘city-lab’ – said Paola Pisano, Councillor for Innovation & Smart City of the City of Turin. – Today and tomorrow, together with TIM and Ericsson, citizens will have access to 5G-enabled technologies and will be able to better relate to the work and the effort we are carrying on to transform Turin into a real Smart City, as the times now require. Our main goal is to foster the interaction of these trials with the citizens, the social impact they have and the city’s feedback since all we do is done specifically to bring new services to Turin and offer new opportunities to the citizens”.
“Today in Turin, where our laboratories are based, we have activated the first 5G antenna with millimetre waves in the historical centre,” said Elisabetta Romano, Chief Technology Officer of TIM. “Thanks to its hyper-speed and the latency 10 times lower than the current mobile networks, we are giving visitors a preview of the 5G power to enable the digital life of citizens and businesses. 5G represents a real revolution which soon everyone will test in their daily lives: applications and services are made possible thanks to the quality of TIM’s network infrastructure, which is already set up to integrate 5G technological standards after the technological primacy obtained on the virtualisation of the network components.”
“With the very first preview of the completely remote controlled car on the 5G network,” stated Mario Di Mauro, Head of Strategy, Innovation & Customer Experience at TIM, “Turin has taken a fundamental step towards the creation of the Gigabit society. The robotics, drones and smart city and virtual reality applications we are showing the city today will be the drivers for the success of the digital business of the future, increasingly geared towards connecting products in addition to people thanks to the enormous potential of the new 5G ultrabroadband network. In this scenario we will maintain an absolute leadership role with partners recognised for their reliability, seeking to simplify the daily lives of our customers who recognise our primacy in the quality of the network and services with respect to competitors.”
“Today in Turin we proved that we are rapidly moving towards 5G – stated Federico Rigoni, Head of Ericsson South East Mediterranean and Country Manager Ericsson Italy. – Soon, both consumers and industries will benefit from all the advantages coming from the adoption of the 5th generation of mobile network. During the year of Ericsson’s centenary in Italy, this initiative confirms our commitment in the digital transformation of the Country and strengthens a long-term collaboration, made up of continuous innovations and records.”
Turin, 26 October 2018
