Powering 5G adoption and ecosystem acceleration in Singapore

By Optus Enterprise

Our parent company Singtel, together with Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) and the Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC) is leading the way with 5G trials in Singapore with a new public-private 5G@Sentosa collaboration project.

Sentosa was selected as a testbed as it provides a unique environment as an ecosystem of leisure experiences and businesses for organisations to study and trial the viability of innovative prototypes and solutions. The testbed catalyses the Singapore’s public sector’s adoption of 5G connectivity ahead of the nationwide 5G rollout in 2025 by enabling agencies to trial use cases with the aim of improving operational effectiveness and deliver citizen-centric services.

Singtel plays an important role with its purpose-built network and edge cloud infrastructure in Sentosa, supporting 5G application rollout on a mass scale. A total of 10 trials have started, leveraging the lower latency, higher speed, and broader bandwidth of 5G technology for use cases in areas such as construction, manufacturing, healthcare and tourism.

The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) is currently on a trial to use 5G for construction applications. This includes deploying fully autonomous robots with mounted 3D laser scanners for remote tracking of work progress, leveraging augmented reality technology for real-time quality control on building installations, and using drones with live video feeds for site inspection. The drone software, command & control, telemetry data and video feeds are processed on Singtel's 5G Multi-Access Edge Compute (MEC).

For the construction industry, drone flights BVLOS (beyond visual- line of sight) takes the risks out of remote site inspections at construction sites with live video data streaming. 

The National Environment Agency (NEA) is working with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to trial the tele-operation of the Autonomous Environmental Service Vehicle for road-sweeping. 5G's high bandwidth and low latency are beneficial for streaming live camera feeds from the vehicle to the off-site operator, as well as transmitting haptic feedback and vehicular commands.

These trials would enable an off-site operator to play the role of the on-board safety driver, a current requirement for Autonomous Vehicle (AV) trials, in the eventual deployment of AVs on public roads.

Teleoperation of autonomous vehicles (AV) improves human workplace safety and better resource utilisation. NEA and NTU are trialling high-fidelity teleoperated Autonomous Vehicles, connected on Singtel 5G, for driverless sweepers.
 
Learn more about the Sentosa trials here and watch the video below.