5G Wireless Communication for Autonomous Excavation

The applicability of wireless 5G network to the information communication needs of autonomous excavations is studied. An autonomous excavator developed by the University of Oulu is used for the experiments in a 5G test network at the Linnanmaa Campus of the University of Oulu. In the experiments, remote and autonomous control methods were used for test drives, in which the operation working was observed and measured. As a reference system, 4G wireless network was used. Remote control worked well in 4G and 5G. In 4G, delay of 1,7 s was observed from joysticks to camera view, while in 5G, the delay was 799 ms. The 5G network delay of 15 ms improvement was measured. Camera and image processing were still the primary reason for delays, approximately about 784 ms. In the 5G test, some jerking movements and steering crashes in autonomous steering were observed. In current 5G networks, uplink speeds are a limiting factor, which requires further attention on future 5G networks and standardization to be better applicable for industry use scenarios. Latency of the connectivity is an important performance characteristic, even more than throughput. 5G can bring some benefits to autonomous excavation, especially more capacity for real-time information utilization.