Samsung and AT&T opened the doors on their new 5G innovation zone inside Samsung's semiconductor facilities in Northeast Austin on Friday.
The new, high-tech space will allow teams to rapidly test and advance how robotics, IoT and other technologies can accelerate and improve manufacturing processes using 5G, LTE and Wi-Fi connections.
“As we evolve into a Smart Factory, Samsung Austin Semiconductor is continuously focused on leveraging data and automation to increase system performance,” Samsung Austin Semiconductor said in a news release. “This collaboration with Samsung Electronics America and AT&T will help us test how a 5G network can improve mobility, performance and efficiencies within our plant.”
Among the things Samsung and AT&T will explore are: 4K video as a sensor with analytics to improve plant security; industrial IoT sensors to monitor environmental conditions from temperature to vibration; and location services to improve worker safety at the plant.
"Increased bandwidth and reduced latency would be a gamechanger in improving efficiency and performance on the production floor and predicting issues before they happen," Samsung and AT&T wrote in a blog post. "Safety also gets a boost as 5G’s lower latency could enable critical data to get to emergency respondents without lag or delay."
In short, 5G has been hailed as one of the cornerstones of many other forms of technology because its data transfer speed can enable vastly improved connections for AR/VR, IoT, video and, of course, AI.
But the announcement also comes as the rest of the city has fallen behind on preparing for the next wave of wireless communications. As other cities have set up infrastructure for 5G expansion, Austin has been slow to approve permits and, as a result, the city appears to be lagging behind on the inevitable expansion of 5G's vastly improved speeds.
Editor's note: A previous version of this story misattributed a quote to an employee who is no longer in that position. The attribution has been removed.
