Igniting Tech Sees Factories of the Future
By Sharon Henry
Irvine, June 12, 2017 — A sold-out audience showed up at CALIT2 Wednesday, June 7 for the Igniting Technology program titled, “5G and the Factories of the Future.”
This is the eleventh year the popular, semi-annual event has brought together technology experts to discuss how innovative breakthroughs may affect the future of business and industry. The evening’s program featured five speakers followed by an audience Q&A moderated by Michael Guiliana, partner at Knobbe Martens, the intellectual property law firm that co-sponsors the series with CALIT2.
While 5G isn’t expected to debut until 2020, an increasing number of companies are investing now to prepare for the new mobile wireless standard. 5G, which stands for fifth generation, will be significantly faster with lower latency, and will integrate networking, computing and storage resources into one programmable and unified infrastructure. This 5G innovation platform will enable emergent technologies, such as the Internet of Things, to become integral parts of our economy and lifestyle. With 5G, factories of the future will have more agile mobile-communication support, enabling greater efficiency and better energy productivity. The next-generation network will give advanced manufacturers the agility to move quickly to meet customer needs and stay ahead of the competition.
(Speakers’ presentations can be downloaded below)
G.P. Li, director, Calit2 Irvine, welcomed the presenters and audience members to the evening’s program,“5G and the Factories of the Future.”
G.P. Li presentation
Michael Guiliana, partner at Knobbe Martens LLP shared updates on industry and patent holders in his presentation,”5G in the Connected Factory.”
Mark Bachman, CTO, Integra Devices, LLC, provided a brief overview of the history of wireless technology and noted that 5G is projected to be a $250 billion market by 2015, and is expected to support up to 1,000 times more bandwidth than 4G.
Stephen Blank, Business Development Manager, Cogito Automation, offered insight into how businesses might take advantage of the next generation of wireless, “5G has the potential to be a game changer and disrupter in the marketplace,” he said. “Technological advances in the manufacturing space traditionally face an uphill battle for acceptance and adoption. Developing strategic partnership consultation teams to work with manufacturers — both small and large, will enable this technology to be understood and then adopted. We must also work with other, non-conventional, critical thinkers to develop knowledge and not just information,” he added.
Manisha Patel, director of Southern California RF/System Performance with Verizon, outlined the evolution of mobile wireless access technology, and described 5G as being able to handle billions of devices with different needs. Predictions claims that nearly 22 million job, and up to $12 trillion in 5G-enabled goods and services could be produced by 2035, when the full economic benefit of 5G is expected to be realized worldwide, Patel said.
In his presentation, Mehmet Yavuz, VP Engineering, Qualcomm Technologies, discussed how robust connectivity is critical to the next industrial revolution. There is a lot of development in the area of factory of future, he said. This means reconfigurable factories with full mobility, and involves connected workers, mobile robotics and many sensors.
Device download speed is critical for consumer satisfaction, said Skyworks Solutions, CTO, Peter Gammel. Consumers have enjoyed more data - through the use of internet and video streaming, social media and applications. As the amount of content rich experiences and more useful application grows, we continue to increase productivity mobile experiences. Users don’t want to wait for their data, he said. One survey found that what constitutes a bad experience is the “dreaded file buffering wheel.” A negative experience was determined to be a wait of about a six seconds, he said.
To learn when the next Igniting Technology event will be held, subscribe to the Calit2 mailing list at https://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/uci-calit2
-- Sharon Henry