The Japanese arm of Cisco has joined with Mitsui Information and KDDI Engineering, parts of trading group Mitsui Group and telecoms operator KDDI respectively, to deploy a private 5G network at the Shinwa Komaki SFiC Lab in Komaki City, in the Aichi Prefecture in the centre of Japan. They are looking to drive smart-factory use cases with 5G.
Komaki SFiC Lab provides technical training for engineers and “system verification” for enterprise customers. A statement (translated from Japanese) said: “In addition to high-speed, low-latency, and large-capacity data collection and visualization, we also conduct various verifications in order to meet the needs of DX in the manufacturing industry, such as remote control of industrial robots and seamless wireless switching of automatic transport equipment.”
The new local 5G setup runs in private enterprise spectrum, separate of public 5G networks in Japan. It uses Cisco’s private 5G core network; KDDI Engineering handled the installation. A statement said the site will run “verification and evaluation of systems that utilize local 5G, as well as performance evaluations of 5G-compatible terminals, communication quality, and other tests customized to suit customer use cases”.
The consortium listed usage of private 5G for automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous transport robots (AMRs), plus robot controls, quality controls, and “information input/output using tablets”. It also noted the importance to integrate 5G with Wi-Fi and other industrial technologies, as per the Cisco pitch on private 5G. It said: “To operate the system stably in an environment where a wide variety of devices coexist, such as at a manufacturing site, an optimal combination of wireless technologies from among the diversifying wireless technologies is required.”
