SHANGHAI -- Huawei Wireless X Labs has joined hands with several industry partners to announce the establishment of a Wireless Connected Factory Special Interest Group (SIG). This is the third in a series of SIGs created by X Labs, with others focusing on X Labs’ Digital Sky initiative and Wireless eHealth. The Wireless Connected Factory SIG has brought together partners in the field of smart manufacturing to conduct further research and promote extensive applications of 5G communication technologies in Industry 4.0. The first SIG group meeting was also held, with guidance from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) being provided. All SIG members attended the gathering. These included: Huawei, ABB, Efort, Bosch, Beckhoff, Hikrobot, Geely, KUKA, and Shenyang Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences. Schneider Electric and IEEE fellow, Professor Xi Ning from the University of Hong Kong was also present.

Flexible manufacturing based on smart machines will help redefine future production lines. These next-generation machines featuring plug-and-play technology are growing increasingly flexible and can easily be adjusted to suit a diverse range of production domains. It is important that factories be equipped with dynamic, high-performance communication networks to support such smart machines. Wireless technologies are an invaluable tool that can substantially help to reduce network construction and maintenance costs, while significantly boosting both productivity and safety.

The manufacturing industry holds the most immense potential for IoT applications. According to an analysis completed by Huawei Wireless X Labs, the connections in the manufacturing sector worldwide will reach 12.5 billion by 2020, with factory networks accounting for US$50 billion of the potential market. At the start of 2017, X Labs targeted wireless robotics as one of its main focuses in wireless use case research. After over half a year of hard work, X Labs and its partners decided upon the Wireless Connected Factory SIG's four research priorities, namely cloud-based programmable logic controllers (PLC), wireless industrial cameras, wireless controlled automated guided vehicles (AGV), and industrial wearables.

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd