With all the talk about 5G, MWC didn’t disappoint with exploring different avenues to deploy 5G. Developed by Ericsson, China Mobile, and OceanAlpha, a 5G unmanned boat was revealed at a live Broadband IoT demo.

The demo showcased an environmental smart vessel that could quickly resolve water pollution by collecting water quality monitoring data, identify the potential cause of the pollutant with HD cameras, and take the necessary actions to rectify the pollutants.

The demonstration showed the OceanAlpha 5G unmanned boat in a pool, located outside the exhibition hall, and visitors could then issue an automatic driving instruction to the boat to drive the unmanned boat remotely through the console. Visitors could then interpret the driving environment information with the HD video returned by the boat camera and other real time information.

According to Ran Zhang, general manager of OceanAlpha, “Relying on 5G communication technology, OceanAlpha’s unmanned boat can conduct water area monitoring, VR back-end demonstration, water quality monitoring, remote application control, and autopilot. This will completely change the traditional operation of the hydrological survey, water quality sampling & monitoring, environmental law enforcement and other water ecological environment monitoring and supervision by effectively enhances data accuracy, reduces costs and improves work efficiency.”