Airtel and TCS demonstrate 5G based Remote Robotic Operations and Artificial Intelligence driven Quality Inspection for Factories of the Future

Bharti Airtel Limited (Airtel), India’s premier digital communications solutions provider, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), announced the successful testing of innovative use cases from TCS’ Neural Manufacturing™ solutions suite on Airtel’s ultra-fast and low latency 5G network.

Airtel has been allocated 5G trial spectrum by the Department of Telecommunications for the purpose of technology validation. Airtel has rolled out #5GforBusiness initiative and is partnering with leading technology companies to demonstrate a wide range of enterprise grade use cases using high speed & low latency networks.

Airtel and TCS joined forces to test 5G based use cases from TCS’s Neural Manufacturing suite of solutions. These solutions help manufacturers build smart, cognitive factories which mimic resilient and adaptive behaviours as well as enable remote robotic operations in potentially hazardous environments like Mining, Chemical plants and Oil & Gas fields to safeguard human capital. They leverage the ultra-reliable low latency communication, enhanced bandwidth, and high device density characteristics of 5G networks and the combinatorial power of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, computer vision, industrial robotics and Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality to enable autonomous actions.

TCS successfully tested two use cases on Airtel’s 5G testbed – remote robotics operations, and vision-based quality inspection, demonstrating how TCS’ Neural Manufacturing solutions and 5G technology can transform industrial operations, and significantly boost quality, productivity and safety. The demonstration was done at Airtel’s 5G Lab in Manesar (Gurgaon).

Randeep Sekhon, CTO - Bharti Airtel, said “Airtel is spearheading 5G in India. The 5G ecosystem will open limitless possibilities for enterprises to enhance productivity and serve their customers even better with digitally enabled applications. We are delighted to work with TCS as our strategic technology partner to start testing real life 5G applications of the future. This also offers tremendous learnings across the value chain and lays a solid foundation for future application roadmap.”

“We believe the future of manufacturing is neural, and have been making sustained investments in research, and innovation, and in building intellectual property. We will continue to build new, differentiated capabilities into TCS’ Neural Manufacturing suite of solutions, harnessing the power of machine vision, machine intelligence and 5G to reimagine and redefine the way smart factories operate. Our partnership with Airtel to deploy and validate these innovative use cases on their 5G network serves as a proof point of the transformative power of these technologies,” said Susheel Vasudevan, Global Head of Manufacturing & Utilities at TCS.

TCS’ Neural Manufacturing suite of solutions help customers across manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, automotive, aerospace, energy, utilities, healthcare, life science and hi-tech domains, achieve an autonomous or lights-out factory vision. These include TCS Autoscape™