Visitors are leaving new Liege showroom with 5G fever
Orange Belgium (OB) has showcased eight new use cases for 5G as part of an economic recovery programme for the easternmost province of Wallonia in Liège. Against the iconic Grand Poste of Liège it showcased its 5G technology and invited Thomas Dermine, Belgium’s State Secretary for Economic Recovery and Strategic Investments, to help it make the case for 5G’s powers to drive economic growth. Also pictured (above) is Karine Dussert-Sarthe, Orange Belgium’s EVP for Marketing, Design and Open Innovation. Orange Belgium (OB) used the event to grandstand eight use cases for 5G.
The three outstanding supporting roles of 5G involved a Robotic digital twin, an augmented ramp agent and an intelligent pallet mover.
The robotic use case was in the pharmaceutical industry, describing how digital twin could replicate and see exactly what the real robot is doing as it prepares drugs in a sealed environment. This saves a human operator having to enter the scene and risk risk of contaminating the workspace. A robot talks to its digital twin via 5G and channels information via digital slices and at high speed. Ultimately, it means the expensive and laborious processes of creating new vaccines or drug treatments can be rationalised. This is a lot easier to show people since you don’t have to explain what seeing augmented reality through a hololens means.
The Intelligent Pallet Mover is an automated guided vehicle that works even longer than an Amazon employee and won’t die of exhaustion after working a 24/7 work pattern. It could be a boon for the logistics and haulage industries of Liege, raising productivity without sacrificing safety. As a facilitator of instant remote control 5G can make automated guided vehicles a more realistic proposition. It also improves Human-Machine Interactions, making them safer.
The Augmented Ramp Agent loads and offloads air cargo and gets the paperwork sorted, creating an uninterrupted workflow, which would save a fortune for local import and export agencies in the industrial heartlands around the Liège province.
The Orange 5G Lab site shows people what all these certified 5G devices do. It demystifies how routers, smartphones, tablets, smart glasses and cameras work on a 5G SA network, according to Xavier Pichon, Orange Belgium’s CEO. “Orange Belgium supports the Walloon economic recovery plan and its objectives to support start-ups, stimulate innovation, foster sustainability and assist training and economic development,” said Pichon.