It will trial mixed reality applications for the home, health and entertainment
BT Group today launches a testbed to develop and trial immersive experiences in the areas of work, home, health and entertainment. The plan is to allow BT Group and others to explore mixed reality use cases enabled by capabilities like exposing network functions, cloud-rendering, better localisation and 5G.
It hopes that by inviting technology partners and customers to collaborate using the testbed, they will collectively develop technologies from various solution providers. They will use EE’s public 5G network and private 5G networks.
BT thinks, like many before, that immersive extended reality experiences have the potential to revolutionise the way we connect, live, work, learn, create, and play. This has yet to materialise and BT reckons their development relies upon strong foundations in networks, technologies and standards.
Hence BT Group wants to understand how networks, platforms, services and apps can be optimised for cloud-GPU rendered extended reality immersive experiences delivered over EE’s public and private 5G networks. The testbed will look to support a range of extended reality use cases, with a focus on augmented reality which enables blended realities – mixing virtual content with the real-world.
Network optimisation
Gabriela Styf Sjoman, MD Research and Network Strategy, BT Group, commented, “Network optimisation is a fundamental enabler for immersive experiences that will require high bandwidth, high capacity, and ultra-low latency networks which can be dynamically configured for the demands of different extended reality service applications.
“As the UK’s leading provider of fixed and mobile networks we’re delighted to invite others in the ecosystem to work with us, using the testbed to explore future use cases for consumers, enterprise and industry sectors.
“With this testbed we’re looking to understand what future extended reality immersive experiences might require from network service providers like BT Group, platform operators and application service developers. These requirements will obviously vary depending on the particular use case.”
At the extreme…
Andy Gower, Head of Immersive Content & Comms Research at BT Group, added, “At the extreme we might need to support a completely cloud rendered immersive experience which would require high-bandwidth and low-latency networks paired with new facilities. [They could include] network exposure functions that would enable a platform operator to request additional capabilities such as edge GPU compute or symmetric bandwidth provision [to] optimise the end-user experience.
“By understanding the demands of future service use cases – networks, platforms and applications can be optimised to provide the best possible quality of experience for users.”
Still in test phase
The platform is still in testing phase, but has enabled demos of use cases for car retail, education, sports broadcasting and medical imaging. At its recent Sustainability Festival, BT showcased an extended reality digital twin of Adastral Park (pictured) – its global R&D headquarters.
Using 5G, cloud-GPU rendering and hybrid localisation, users can view data like power usage of buildings and equipment by integrating live data streams from Johnson Controls International.
Digital twins are a core building block of immersive experiences, BT says. They can be used to collate and present real-time data from physical systems in an immersive virtual presentation, enabling real-time monitoring and two-way control, plus modelling, simulation and analytics of complex real-world systems.
BT hopes future immersive experiences will be developed collectively by an ecosystem of content providers, hardware, software, platform developers, underpinned by strong technological foundations and enabling technologies.