View into the Arena 2036 hall (Picture: Arena2036)

The joint project “SynergieRegion”, funded as part of the BMVI’s 5G Implementation Funding call in the 5G Innovation Program, aims to research new 5G applications for Smart City and Industry 4.0. Fraunhofer IAO and the cooperating IAT of the University of Stuttgart are working together with partners from industry and science at the ARENA2036 research campus to develop application-oriented solutions for the regional economy.

For the city of tomorrow, 5G will represent much more than just faster Internet. What is important to us in the project is the transfer of technology from today’s indoor or campus applications to public spaces,” says Steffen Braun. He is head of the Urban System Design research area at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO. “In this context, we see new fields of application especially in inner-city airspace, which we are testing step by step between technical options and legal experimental spaces,” he adds.

The state capital Stuttgart worked on the basis of the project during the competition phase and is a partner in the project. Ines Aufrecht, Head of Economic Development at the state capital, emphasizes: “The application scenarios worked on, especially in the areas of Smart City and Industry 4.0, strengthen the business location in a custom-fit manner. In this way, we are supporting the companies based in Stuttgart and the region in taking the decisive steps forward in the development and testing of concrete 5G applications for modern production systems and urban space.”

Implementation of 5G within reach

As part of the project, various use cases will be researched over the next three years in order to harness the potential of 5G technology. In the first sub-project, Balluff, Nokia, Robert Bosch, SPIE and the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA will focus on networked manufacturing. Based on this, various use cases in logistics, intralogistics and networked manufacturing will be focused on. In parallel, the knowledge gained will be transferred to smart city pilot applications. Here, Nokia, the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO and the Institute of Industrial Engineering and Technology Management IAT at the University of Stuttgart will work together with Unisphere to test various areas of application for drones to support operational and maintenance processes and for logistics.

Vaihingen Campus part of the 5G model region Stuttgart

As part of the 5G4KMU Transfer Center project, Fraunhofer IPA and IAO already have several local 5G test environments in Baden-Württemberg that enable knowledge transfer of the 5G applications described for small and medium-sized enterprises. For the demonstration of the smart city applications, different locations in the city of Stuttgart will be chosen according to the respective use case. For the testing and demonstration of these applications, the use of a mobile 5G infrastructure is planned that can be set up at the different locations with reasonable effort. Depending on the availability of a public 5G network, this can also be used for the use cases in the further course of the project.

As a special area belonging to the state in the urban area of Stuttgart with a high number of campus applications for drone-related tests and processes, the university campus in Stuttgart-Vaihingen is to become part of the 5G model region Stuttgart. For this purpose, various use cases based on a 5G campus grid will be realized on the university campus and the adjacent area from 2021 to 2023 in close coordination with the regional council and the university construction office (including the associated state ministry), starting with test flights between Arena 2036 and the Fraunhofer campus.