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Orange and Skyebase are demonstrating what 5G Standalone can really do under the Antwerp Port House. A joint project is highlighting the possibilities of a full-fledged 5G network.
Orange and Skyebase are demonstrating what 5G Standalone can really do under the Antwerp Port House. A joint project is highlighting the possibilities of a full-fledged 5G network. We will see what this means in practice in a demo in the real world.
Below the Antwerp Port House, in the middle of a circle of traffic cones, an oversized Skyebase drone is waiting for permission to take off. A little further away is a black van packed with technology from Skyebase itself, but also from Orange. Both companies invited us to a demo that combines 5G and AI.
Skyebase is a Belgian provider of solutions using drones and robots. The Antwerp-based scale-up focuses on the fast and efficient inspection of industrial infrastructure using drones. For a long time, this was a relatively inefficient process, with no real-time analysis of the images and certainly no real-time availability. At Zaha Hadid Square, we discover how this process has been drastically improved thanks to the introduction of 5G and AI.
“We used to drive a van to the site,” says Tom Daniëls, CEO and co-founder of Skyebase. “We inspected sites with our drones, which streamed the images to the van. An expert might be on site watching. We retrieved the high-resolution images from the drone’s SD card after each landing and finally uploaded them to the office for analysis.”
Today the process is different. The drone takes off effortlessly and is not affected by the adverse weather conditions that put the device to the test with gusts of wind and a few drops of rain. The quadcopter sends sharp images back to the base station in the van via a classic radio connection. We see the port house, the London Bridge, some cranes and pipelines, but there is no sign of summer.
“Here you can see how the images arrive on the I-Spect platform we developed ourselves,” says Daniëls. A beautiful video stream appears on a large screen. But what is more impressive is what we see on the tablet that the team has prepared. It is not directly connected to the drone, but shows the same stream in real time without any delay.
“This allows experienced inspectors to view the drone images remotely immediately,” explains Daniëls. “They can issue guidelines immediately and no longer need to be on site. In addition, when the drone lands, we immediately upload the high-resolution images from the SD card to the cloud from the transporter.”
We wave to the drone when it spots us and see a delay of less than a second between our action and the image on the tablet. The whole process is smooth and seems easy, but it is not.
“We have been working on this project for about a year and a half,” says Erik Van Lierde, project architect at Orange. He explains what is needed to achieve this experience. First and foremost, you need a little background knowledge about 5G.
Van Lierde: “The 5G you see on your phone today could be called fake 5G. You get a 5G signal with the corresponding speed, but the backbone of the network is still 4G. We call this 5G Non-Standalone. Here in the port we have rolled out a 5G standalone network. This combines the antennas with a complete 5G backbone.”
The 5G you see on your phone today could be called fake 5G.
Erik Van Lierde, Project Architect Orange
In Orange’s case, this backbone is the 5G data center in the south of Antwerp. We visited this site when it opened in 2019. The 5G backbone is very different from the more physical and wired core installations for 4G. Finally, 5G Standalone runs on servers, which enables extensive virtualization. The 5G Standalone network is crucial for the demo with SkyeBase today.
“The network allows us to set up network slices,” continues van Lierde. We can optimize these slices for specific purposes. In addition, we ensure that the slices offer guaranteed connection quality.”
The drone has now landed neatly in its cone circle. The pilot, dressed in a fluorescent vest, is preparing for a second flight. In a real inspection flight, the Skyebase people would now replace the SD card and upload the images for further analysis.
Skyebase therefore needs two things for its drone inspections: a reliable, low-latency connection so experts can watch in real time, and a connection with high throughput capacity to upload the high-resolution images remotely. Of course, in this case, that upload may not support the quality of the real-time connection.
Solving something like this is only possible with 5G Standalone. Van Lierde: “We have developed two network slices. One is optimized for low latency and provides the real-time connection, the other enables the images to be uploaded quickly without affecting the connection of the first slice. Both 5G slices also run alongside the 5G non-standalone connections that run over the same antennas.”
Implementing this configuration proved to be not so easy. “We had to examine and adjust many parameters to make sure everything worked as intended,” says Van Lierde. “Nobody has ever done a project like this before, so we had to work everything out ourselves.”
Skybase itself uses the network via a 5G router on the bus, which is compatible with 5G standalone and non-standalone. The bus acts as a base station. Theoretically, it is possible to connect the drone directly to 5G as well, but that is currently a future plan, if only because compatible secure drones tailored to Skyebase’s needs are not yet available.
The 5G slices created by Orange give Skyebase new capabilities that allow the company to serve customers better and more efficiently. Inspections are smoother and faster because analysts are available remotely and raw images can be uploaded and analyzed more quickly. Skyebase can also now better assist customers in a crisis situation because experts can view drone images immediately.
Meanwhile, the drone takes off for its second flight and sets its sights on a crane a little further away. On the screens in the van, we now see different parts of the crane highlighted in green as the drone examines them more closely. This is AI at work.
“We developed various AI models and then compressed them to work on real-time images,” says Daniëls. “This is the corrosion model. This marks possible corrosion and helps experts by pointing out these spots. We compressed the AI ​​model so that it can analyze videos in real time at ten frames per second.”
This analysis is not done in the cloud, but on a server in the transporter itself. Skyebase has developed several other models, some of which are compressed to work with the real-time footage, while others are applied to the video footage as it is uploaded from the drone’s SD card.
On the banks of the Kattendijkdok we see how the buzzword of today (AI) and the buzzword of yesterday (5G) hand in hand can offer real, realistic added value in our country. Skyebase is an Antwerp scale-up with large industrial customers. Today’s demo is not a story of the future, but a current capacity enabled by both 5G and AI.
5G is an improvement for the average smartphone user, offering faster speeds and significantly more capacity to support multiple devices simultaneously. But the real potential of 5G, and especially 5G Standalone, lies in industrial applications. Network slicing and optimizing slices for latency or throughput capacity will allow companies like Skybase to scale their service and efficiency.
We recently conducted an analysis of five years of 5G in which we wrote that conceptual proof gradually become real projects. Orange and Skyebase demonstrate this with a very concrete application that also highlights the added value of AI and network slicing.
Source: IT Daily
As an experienced journalist and author, Mary has been reporting on the latest news and trends for over 5 years. With a passion for uncovering the stories behind the headlines, Mary has earned a reputation as a trusted voice in the world of journalism. Her writing style is insightful, engaging and thought-provoking, as she takes a deep dive into the most pressing issues of our time.
