Verizon Built on 5G Challenge

We are excited to share that InOrbit is one of a small number of companies that have been selected as finalists for Verizon’s Built on 5G Challenge. This was an extremely competitive process, with over 500 innovators vying for the top spots. A couple of weeks ago, we got a unique chance to present to key Verizon executives and were impressed by their drive to enable innovation. The set up was a bit like a Shark Tank episode. Here’s a quick video the Verizon team put together.

At InOrbit, we believe that the combination of humans, robots and AI in the cloud is the key to addressing some of humanity’s biggest challenge, from food production to shelter. Our mission is to accelerate the adoption of robotics at scale by providing the necessary tools and infrastructure to manage fleets of thousands of distributed autonomous robots.

A key element to making this vision a reality is the need for robot-cloud connectivity. Unlike old-school industrial robots, most modern robots have some basic connectivity. In fact, many have both wifi and LTE connections, in order to handle various deployment scenarios and network conditions. However, this is still a significant pain point for many robotics and enterprise companies, for example those operating in a warehouse or retail store where wifi coverage may be spotty and consumer cellular access can be hard to manage. Similar challenges exist when robots are operating out in the field or on busy streets.

That’s why we are excited about the promise of 5G, including lower latency and higher bandwidth connectivity. We were at Mobile World Congress this week and it was all about 5G. We are already working with several partners to bring these benefits to the robotics community, and will be able to discuss this more publicly soon. Moreover, we don’t even have to wait for 5G to be rolled out, as some of this is already possible today with advanced LTE use cases, for example making it possible to replace the use of wifi with managed connectivity services, even inside customers’ buildings.

We also got a chance to be at the Verizon booth during the Built on 5G announcement. Christian Guirnalda, Director of Verizon 5G Labs, did a fantastic job announcing the finalists. 3 out of the 10 finalists will be picked to present their solution at CES. As a finalist, we will be working closely with the Verizon team to combine 5G with the unique functionality of InOrbit, including adaptive diagnostics that responds to input from the robot, network and users to deliver the optimal data feed by balancing edge- and cloud-based analytics.