M2M without Tactile Internet? No way...

During the last Industry 4.0 conferences I had many interesting discussions and contacts. Surprisingly offen the topic was the 5G network and if it is really so crucial for Industry 4.0 (Industrial Internet) and the M2M communication (Machine to Machine).

Are there really any doubts? Does anybody think that we can build up on the existing communication infrastructure?

That's the main reason for this article and the try to describe the problem in understandable way without too much technical aspects.

The limits:

Where should we set the limits for the necessary communication? Of course a HUMAN. At the end a human plays the role of expert or controller in the whole system.

The speed of a human interaction is different 

-> 100ms for audio processing

-> 10ms is the shutter-speed of human ey

-> and 1ms is a human tactile in case of preemptive reaction.

As example:

If a human uses a touchscreen the speed of fingers is 1 meter per second, or 1mm/ms. So if the latency time would be for example 10ms, we are talking about the difference in 10mm - 1cm!!!

Have you ever tried to fly mobile phone controlled helicopter via WiFi? Then you know what I am talking about... ;-)


With such huge latency we cannot do any real-time controlling of machines, augmented reality, robotics or IoT.

In numbers:

300.000km/s is the speed of light. So if we would use the glass fibre as a medium and we would try to catch the latency 1ms then we are talking about 300km/s speed. In duplex mode 150km/s. 

As such we should not think about controlling of machines in real-time overseas.

Conclusion:

The answer is 5G. But not only because of the speed, but especially because of the resiliency and guaranteed latency. 

If we are talking about driverless cars then the ESP and ASB are already working with 1ms latency. That's enough for one autonomous car on the street but it is not enough for connected driverless cars that are communicating with each other...

I hope, I could explain in simple language the importance of technologies of 5G and Tactile Internet...