Together with Proximus and Computer Checkpoint, we equipped the Boston Dynamics Spot robot with 5G Standalone (SA) technology. This enables the control of Spot and its video stream or other payload data from wherever you might be.
Currently, you can only control Spot using the built-in Wi-Fi. Spot and its handheld controller need to be either directly connected using a Wi-Fi hotspot that Spot creates or using an existing Wi-Fi infrastructure. This means you either need to be controlling Spot from nearby or have Wi-Fi everywhere you want to deploy him. In realistic scenarios for the robot dog, this is not ideal since this limits the range in which you can use it.
Being able to deploy Spot across wide areas, using a reliable and low latency 5G Standalone (SA) cellular network seemed very interesting for industrial usage or for public safety services. This would allow Spot to patrol and inspect large areas or send the robot into dangerous environments for humans. All while controlling it safely from miles away.
So we got to work to build a proof of concept and quickly came up with a possible setup. After some testing and finetuning, it worked flawlessly. Below you can see a picture and video of the proof of concept setup.
We used a Cradlepoint R1900 5G router together with the Proximus 5G SA innovation network on 3500 MHz (band n78).
Now we need to build this into a waterproof enclosure and we can deploy this on industrial customer sites. We also look forward to the use of 5G LAN technology which would further simplify the setup.
Curious about 5G technology? Check out our 5G overview blog post or get in touch.
