du Showcases 5G Controlled Robot Over Private 5G SA Network Leveraging AWS and Athonet Technologies

Abu Dhabi, 18th November, 2021:  du, from Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), showcased at ADIPEC a live use case of a 5G controlled robot, powered by du’s 5G Private Network with Athonet’s cloud native 5G Standalone (5G SA) core network, and running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Snowball Edge.

The live demonstration relied on robotic solutions from Energy Robotics, and can be adapted to a variety of use cases, including providing 5G ultra reliable low latency connectivity (URLLC) to remote-controlled robots that handle on-site inspection in hazard environment such as energy applications, manufacturing, security surveillance, and others. These robots would have the capability to see, hear, measure, move, and act autonomously in any challenging and hazard environments. This improves the safety of facilities by ensuring reliable inspections and by capturing high quality data and processing it at the edge for faster actions.

Saleem Al Blooshi, Chief Technology Officer, EITC, said, "5G SA network is a key enabler to support enterprise use cases such as energy, utilities, manufacturing and agriculture. In collaboration with AWS, du can extend the compute capabilities along with IoT/AI/ML use cases to our enterprise customers premises through our fastest and most capable 5G network in the UAE. Our efforts to improve the efficiency and performance of our network have resulted in us delivering the fastest network speeds in the UAE, which is a testament to our commitment to providing the best 5G network for enterprises and consumers across UAE.” 

Utilizing du’s 5G SA Private Network, the demoed solution is powered by AWS Snowball Edge, an edge compute and storage device with on-board S3 storage and EC2 compute for disconnected mode ruggedized environments. AWS Snowball Edge can do local data analytics and edge-computing workloads in addition to transferring data between local environments and AWS. Athonet's next generation Connectivity Platform - based on the industry-leading Private 5G SA Core - enables cost-effective deployment of high-performance 5G networks.

The 5G SA Private Networks can power mission-critical systems and applications that require ultra-reliable (99.999%) and low latency (~ one millisecond), with very high security. du’s private 5G networks can provide customers with a scalable, customizable platform to take advantage of the comprehensive set of AWS edge-to-cloud services and solutions that package IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), ML, robotics, analytics, compute, and storage capabilities to help customers achieve business outcomes across common industrial workloads.

“We are delighted to work with innovative companies like du and AWS to power 5G-SA private mobile solutions in the region,” said Gianluca Verin, CEO of Athonet. “We enable operators like du to deploy agile private networks on customer premises that combine localized connectivity and control with access to the infinite resources and applications of AWS.”