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“Imagine a normal day in the 2030s. You start with your home robot bringing your coffee just the way you like it while you scan the news on your mixed reality mobile. You put on your smart exoskeleton suit and go to work.” Andrés Vicente, CEO of Ericsson Iberia, invites you to dream of the future. He has spent time trying to make those dreams come true. We continue in 2030: “when you leave home, your electronic watchdog starts its home surveillance service, coordinated with other similar systems in the neighborhood. You settle into your autonomous vehicle and your personal bot opens the main tasks of the day. You remember how much time was wasted in the past with traffic jams. At the end of your day, you enjoy more free time than ever for entertainment. You do this with multi-sensory virtual reality experiences and by making holographic calls to family and friends. You wonder how you have been able to live without these crucial devices for so long.”
As the user begins to familiarize himself with 5G technology, large companies and institutions in Europe are already laying the foundations for the next generational leap. 6G promises to change the world in ways that, for now, are only possible in our imaginations.
Hexa-X is Europe’s flagship research project in this field. Among the participants are the most advanced companies in the communication sector: Ericsson, Nokia, Telefónica, Orange, Siemens, Telecom Italia… It also involves academic researchers from reference centers, such as the Carlos III University of Madrid, the Aalto University of Finland, the Polytechnic of Pisa or Turin. “The objective of Hexa-X is to develop a vision of future 6G systems and put in place key technological enablers to connect the human, physical and digital worlds”, explains Vicente. And do it in a coordinated way throughout the continent.
Although Europe suffered some delays in the deployment of 5G, at the moment, the European industry is a leader in this technology. And in the face of the technological leap that 6G will entail, we will be much more prepared, because from the beginning we will have a common position and a strategy shared by all the Member States. That is one of the main goals of Hexa-X.
Hexa-X’s goal is to develop a vision for future 6G systems and put in place key technology enablers to connect the human, physical and digital worlds.
Andres Vicente, CEO of Ericsson Iberia
“As a technical leader, Ericsson’s contribution will be instrumental in laying the foundation for future use cases such as distributed MIMO, machine learning (AI/ML), and the overall 6G vision and architecture,” says Vicente. And this is just the beginning. With speeds 50 times higher than 5G, permanent access and reduced energy consumption, the network of the future will not be a reality until the end of this decade. “We are taking the first steps in 6G so we still do not have great certainties, but rather lines that are being explored,” says Carlos Jesús Bernardos Cano, a researcher at Carlos III. Cano participates in Hexa-X and is co-editor of the European white paper on 6G. He is drawing those lines to explore.
The 6G will be one of the basic pillars of the societies of the future, as the book points out. And we must ensure that this progress is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. For this reason, Europe must take a leading role in everything related to 6G and it should commit to developing this technology from a European perspective, with more guarantees. “This (r)evolution must be in line with Europe’s main social values in terms of privacy, security, transparency and inclusion,” says Bernardos Cano in the book. “Digital technologies are also becoming a critical and essential means of guaranteeing the sovereignty of countries. The development of Europe-based 6G infrastructures and solutions is one of the keys to ensuring European sovereignty in critical technologies and systems.”
A copy of the physical world in the virtual
6G will mean a much richer and more complex connection than seen before. Copies of the physical world can be created in the virtual one. They are called digital twins. This technology is already being used with 5G in the industrial field: “they allow us to predict and act on what is happening in the real world, applying and testing solutions in a virtual environment,” says Bernardos Cano. A practical case, for example, is the one that occurs in the Port of Livorno, Italy, where Ericsson has already implemented a digital twin. “Thanks to the information collected in real time by intelligent sensors, cameras and vehicles, an AI-based operations control system can be generated to determine logistics tasks and activities,” says Vicente. Thanks to the tests carried out on the virtual port, the real port has improved its efficiency and reduced its energy cost.
6G will allow these twins to be created on a larger scale and more complex, translating entire cities (with their flow of traffic, people, their hydraulic and electrical systems…) into a virtual environment. It’s not exactly about the metaverse. This digital world, still under construction, draws on ideas from science fiction (such as the novel SnowCrash by Neal Stephenson or Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline) and is being projected by large companies more focused on entertainment, such as Meta, Epic Games or Microsoft. The idea is more similar to that of an immersive video game.
An avatar from the metaverse can be used to make a video call in which we do not want to show our real face. A digital twin would serve, for example, to analyze how our body could react to an operation
The digital twin, on the other hand, is a concept that is born from industrial and business processes, where it is already being used. Try to perfectly replicate objects, machines and humans in the form of avatars. It supposes a greater complexity, since it is not about drawing a hollow scenario, a trompe l’oeil of reality, as if it were a video game. Here you have to represent reality with all the data it contains beyond its casing to propose possible scenarios and see how this digital twin reacts.
An avatar from the metaverse can be used to make a video call in which we do not want to show our real face on the screen. A digital twin would serve, for example, to analyze how our body might react to an operation. It is less showy, but much more useful and complex.
It will not be the only advance that will allow the 6G connection. Bernardos Cano highlights telepresence and holographic communications. Vicente adds the internet of the senses (where the information will not only be visual and sound) and the normalization of a neologism: the cobot. “In the age of automation and robotization, how humans work together with robots is becoming more and more important. The cobot Industrial or collaborative robots are designed to be able to cooperate with humans in an intelligent and safe way, and are destined to become a key part of industry 4.0.”
At present, robotics activities are strictly separated from those carried out by people. This is done, among other things, to ensure the safety of workers. But collaborative robots will be able to monitor the stage and coexist on the same production line alongside humans without sacrificing safety. To do so, they will need a huge amount of data, something that will only be possible with the connectivity of the future.
These are just some of the scenarios in which the most cutting-edge companies and the most renowned research centers in Europe are working. 6G will enable new horizons that will radically transform how we work, interact and live. It is important to create the foundations on which this technology will be based. The Hexa-X project will ensure Europe an active role in this endeavor.
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Quellenlink : elpais.com
