Mobile World Congress: My hologram, 5G vineyard and digital twin

pavilion of phone in it World Mobile Congress This year it became one of the busiest thanks to the interest in the projects and solutions presented there. One of the most impressive is the 3D holographic telepresence system, developed in collaboration with the New York company Evercoat, which uses the Mavericks tool, and which worked with the Spanish company on the integration of virtual worlds, two-way sound and the construction of a virtual model room with 21 cameras.

“What we are doing is raising a 3D avatar in real time, it is what is called a volumetric video, which generates 5 gigabits of bandwidth information _explains Juan Cambeiro, Innovation Specialist at Telefónica from A Coruña_. This can do two things: on the one hand, a streaming in real time over the Internet, which we can insert into a virtual environment, like a television studio or something more playful like the seabed, and which we can watch with augmented reality on devices that already support this technology; and, on the other hand, you can have footage for any marketing or educational material, so we can project it wherever we want in front of us ». The result is not a flat video, but a volumetric one, which can be rotated and, even if the viewer moves, the viewing angle changes, because it seems to circle around the avatar in 3D, with which it is possible to talk because there is two-way sound.

What is this technology used for? “In real time, to present at a distance, for example, last year’s champion Carolina Marín held a badminton class from Madrid, I had HoloLens glasses to see her in front of me _says Cambeiro_. First it’s technology, and then you forget it, as if it’s really there. We used it with some fashion designer for a remote catwalk, and it’s often used in television, virtual studios without a flat green background. In engraving, it was used in the USA for postural rehabilitation problems.

Virtual modeling is fast, it is enough to enter a room with multiple cameras and our hologram appears on the screen. All generated information is processed in the data center edge computing or a nearby cloud, so there’s low latency and immediacy, and augmented reality devices connect over 5G so there’s no lag.

Another technology exhibited by the Spanish company is a crop control system based on a NB-IoT device (narrowband network), which includes an air temperature sensor, a rain gauge, a tensiometer buried in the ground that tells us the difficulty a piece of land has to extract water and other which measures its humidity. “The results of these measurements are transmitted to a computer platform that displays a satellite image of the field _detailed by Laura Sanz, product manager at Telefónica_. The green parts are those with the highest water density, and the yellow or red parts are drier. Then there is a section on zoning where you can say which phytosanitary measures or I have to take risks”.

This pilot project is being developed in the Galician winery Viña Godeval (O Barco), where data is collected in real time (air temperature, relative humidity, dew point…) so that those responsible can know the state of the vineyard. Every farmer can implement it on his plots, and there is also a management part that records all the activities you have undertaken and a field notebook: from September you will have to have all the data you do on your land and send it to the Ministry of Agriculture”, remembers Sanz.

Andrés Escribano, director of start-ups and Industry 4.0 at Telefónica Tech, explains that “this is the initial part of the series of services that we will develop in the field of sustainability. The digital transformation of agriculture has not progressed as quickly as it should, there are places where it has, such as the Netherlands, which is applying exhaustive technology to improve the process. Spain is far behind in terms of agriculture.

These technologies make the farmer’s life easier: “His quality of life changes, he doesn’t have to fight over all the land when he has many hectares, he can do it from home or over a coffee and he can make decisions about his plot without having to be physically present or constantly aware of the crops” .

The Ourense project mixes information obtained through satellites plus that provided by sensors, all of which will be sold in different packages. “The idea is to then integrate the drones, so that they not only read the data, but also directly apply the phytosanitary product to each area. This is meant to see where you have a problem or need to improve the plot, not everywhere; This is what is called precision agriculture because only the area that is needed is corrected,” concludes Escribano.

NB-IoT is a mobile network, with the capacity to provide services in large areas, designed to connect sensors and devices that do not require huge amounts of data; In exchange for that, it gets penetration on very complex terrain and, above all, great dispersion. It is a 4G protocol designed for the Internet of Things.

Finally, we attended a demonstration of a digital twin, a virtual representation of the manufacturing process that represents an important advance in industry efficiency. It is an exact real-time copy of the physical environment, for example, a robotic arm printing a part. The digital twin receives real-time data from the robot’s sensors and telemetry (physical factory). The graphic part of the twin shows how the path and progress of the print are synchronized thanks to the low latency of 5G.

They developed two modes of activity. On the one hand, simulation, in which we can modify one of the relevant variables that affect productivity, such as hand speed, and thus fundamentally change KPIs (key performance indicators), productivity and quality. If we increase the speed, we will see more defective parts come out. This helps the operator determine what the optimum operating speed is. On the other hand, the difference of the 5G twin compared to others is the sensitivity to respond with very little delay to what is happening in the factory; if it detects an error, for example, in the thickness of the printing layer, it automatically corrects it. The robotic arm positions itself and deposits the missing material to compensate and resolve this deviation. “That’s how we get the correct part, which passes quality control and prevents something from breaking; energy, time, raw materials, waste material are saved… The process is optimized, which results in significant savings for the activity”, Telefónica points out.