BEIJING, Sep 6(S&T Daily) The 5G and Industrial Internet Forum, which was part of the 2021 World 5G Convention, came to an end. The initiative of 5G enabling industrial internet to usher in a scale breakthrough was discussed and accomplished.

Eleven experts from industry and academia attended the meeting, including experts from Germany and Korea. The main topics of the forum included 5G-enabled industrial internet, 5G and intelligent manufacturing, 5G and robots, and 5G and smart ports and smart mines.

The digitization, networking and intelligent transformation of the industry have become a global consensus. As a new-generation communication technology, 5G, featuring large bandwidth, wide connectivity and low latency, is deeply integrated with traditional industries to create industry-specific edge intelligence networks and empower various vertical industries.

The chairman of this forum, Gui Weihua first made a statement about 5G applications in the digital transformation of industry in China. He mentioned that for the nonferrous metals industry, there is an immediate demand in changing the way how organizations are operating, especially for the intelligent manufacturing process as well as smart decision-making process.

He elaborated more on how 5G technology could enable the faster digitization of the nonferrous metals industry, resulting in a greener and more efficient industrial operation.

Group manager of Fraunhofer IOSB-AST, Andreas Wenzel called for the standardization of the data interface platform on a worldwide basis. He believed that this will help to accelerate the development of industrial internet. He mentioned that although a lot of crucial steps still need human interactions, the seamless machine-to-machine operation is the key to improve the efficiency and achieving more accurate outcome.

He also addressed that communications technologies, especially 5G technology would play an inevitable role in making sure that real-time data is collected and analyzed in a timely manner so that intelligent manufacturing could be achieved.

General manager of CICT Mobile, Suo Shiqiang discussed that in the industrial internet field, positioning technology is the most basic technology. At present, researching on the centimeter-level positioning technology has become the goal for the 5G-Advanced and 6G technology evolution.

Currently, 5G is deeply utilized in various industries in China including aviation industry, smart ports and mines industry, and intelligent manufacturing industry. Vice General Manager of China Merchants International Technology Company, Wang Yihong introduced China’s Port of Magang project where for the first time, traditional bulk cargo terminals were upgraded into smart terminals with many intelligent features.

Li Guangju, President of China Unicom Digital Technology Company also made important remarks at the meeting. He mentioned that there is a significant difference in the use of 5G technologies between retail market and industrial market. In retail market, most of the 5G applications were standardized and could be easily interchangeable between products. However, the situation is a bit different in the industrial market, where the need of 5G technology is highly differentiated and the implementation of 5G technology takes a great amount of time for planing and testing. 

However, he mentioned that if we could overcome these hurdles, we would be able to provide more values for our business partners. 

The meeting was a great success. Ma Haixu, Vice President of Huawei, Professor Seung Ho Hong, Wang Li, GM of JD Smart Industry Cloud, Cui Li, Chief Development Officer of ZTE Corporation, and Wang Tao, Senior Technical director of QI-ANXIN Technology Group also attended the meeting.