Kathy Gibson is at Mobile World Congress 2022 – VMware is unveiling its vision for Automating Life, underpinned by the fusion of cloud, networking and AI technologies, and a belief system structured around equity, sustainability and trust.
To chart a successful course to 6G, the evolution of these underlying technologies must align with the evolutionary cycle of human behaviour, society, and technology as they influence each other to form an evolution continuum.
“This evolution continuum — the way people change, technology evolves, and society responds — is how VMware aims to shape its path to 6G, says Kaniz Mahdi, vice-president: distributed edge at VMware. “By promoting technologies centred around human needs, that improves and saves lives, it should enable humans to grow in and with technology in the way people want — not the way technology dictates.”
VMware is supporting German researchers Professor Fitzek and Professor Falko on their mission to shape the future of wireless with human-centric technologies.
Under the direction of Professor Frank Fitzek, professor and head of the Deutsche Telekom Chair of Communication Networks at TU Dresden, the Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI) and the 6G-life hub are working to enable humans to interact in quasi realtime with cyber-physical-systems in the physical or digital world over intelligent communications networks (5G and beyond).
Enabling this type of interaction will promote equitable access to remote environments for people of different genders, ages, cultural backgrounds, or physical limitations. It also has the potential to democratise access to skills and expertise, as well as its cutting-edge research for sustainability, security, resilience, and latency.
“We’re thrilled to be working with VMware to further the research and innovations that are playing a significant role in the path to 6G,” says Prof Fitzek. “We started 6G-life to provide new approaches for sustainability, security, resiliency and latency.
“This collaboration will help us advance our leading work in specific areas such as the Tactile Internet in the Cluster of Excellence CeTI, 5G communications networks, quantum communication and artificial intelligence methods.”
As the fusion of cloud, networking, and AI plays a pivotal role for 6G, novel concepts for distributed systems, data management, and computing are essential. With its track record and expertise, the Telecommunications Network Group at TU Berlin under Professor Falko Dressler, is developing novel solutions for future virtual edge computing, machine learning and networking, and distributed data management in the era of 6G.
“We are excited to start a collaboration with VMware,” says Prof Dressler. “Virtualisation at multiple layers of a mobile edge system introduces flexibility at a potential cost of added complexity. ML helps overcome this complexity arising from extreme virtualisation on core-to-edge-to-end device continuum and opens up new frontiers for cutting edge research paving the path to 6G.”
These academic grants will facilitate research and discovery on Automating Life in concert with the Digital Equity Grid Innovation (TETRA) initiative launched by VMware in partnership with IEEE FNI and Mitacs in Canada, as VMware continues to expand its research and innovation portfolio with similar grants and partnerships across the globe.