Written by Andrew Wooden
UK telco group BT has opened doors to a new testbed designed to play around with immersive experiences for work, home, health and entertainment.
The testbed will enable it and collaborators to test out how things like network exposure functions, cloud-rendering and enhanced localisation might support mixed reality use cases, and it’s all being hinged off EE’s public and private 5G.
BT will use the facility to work out how networks, platforms, services and apps can be optimised for cloud-GPU rendered extended reality immersive experiences, with a focus on the use of augmented reality, we’re told.
The platform is still in testing phase, but has apparently already yielded some demonstrations of use cases for car retail, education, sports broadcasting, medical imaging, and an extended reality digital twin of Adastral Park – its global R&D headquarters. Using 5G, cloud-GPU rendering and hybrid localisation, the system allowed data such as power usage of buildings and equipment to be viewed by integrating live data streams from Johnson Controls International.
“With this testbed we’re looking to understand what future extended reality immersive experiences might require from network service providers like BT Group, platform operators and application service developers,” said Andy Gower, Head of Immersive Content & Comms Research.
