UrBC, Moscow, December 25, 2019. A driverless KamAZ truck controlled through a 5G communication network was presented at an industrial site in Russia for the first time this month: the vehicle covered a 1,000-meter distance from the loading point to the unloading point at Listvyazhnaya Mine in Kuzbass; the truck was controlled through MegaFon’s 5G base station, the telecom company’s press service reports.

Following the experiment, a video conference call to Moscow took place via Russia’s first 5G network to the east of the Urals that is now at work at Listvyazhnaya Mine. The call connecting MegaFon’s Chief Executive Officer Gevork Vermishyan and Vice Governor of Kemerovo Region for Industry, Transportation, and Environment Andrei Panov was made with the help of commercially available infrastructure appliances by Huawei (home PLMN, a 5G base station, and the mobile terminal Huawei Mate X).

‘The launch of a driverless truck is an example of how today’s technologies can be applied in the industrial sector. These are the businesses that will be the primary users of the globally spreading 5G communication standard. Thanks to the fifth-generation networks, you can get the parts of production process that could potentially be hazardous to humans fully automated; you can use video options, augmented reality features, and other things. The tech revolution will affect the entire production process’s efficiency,’ says CEO MegaFon Gevork Vermishyan.