Verizon has teamed with the University of South Carolina to create a 5G-powered facility for experimentation in a variety of fields that serve the public good.
Located in the McNair Center in Columbia, South Carolina, the Innovation Experience Hub allows USC students to participate in study projects that examine manufacturing, healthcare and civil infrastructure and more, enabled by a Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband network, the New York City-based company said Friday.
“Working with the University of South Carolina, we have a great opportunity to collaborate with dozens of partners to ideate and develop new 5G-powered solutions leveraging the latest technologies, including large-scale IoT, artificial intelligence, computer vision and augmented reality,” commented Jennifer Artley, senior vice president of 5G acceleration at Verizon Business.
On the network, researchers are expected to work on enhancing manufacturing activities like quality sensing and defect identification. For healthcare purposes, they will examine the impacts of remote health monitoring on emergency response as well as determine how 5G can assist real-time analysis of patient vitals, in addition to hospital connected asset facilitation.
In the realm of civil infrastructure, Innovation Experience Hub participants will navigate the different ways 5G communications can be used to oversee the conditions of roads and bridges, report statistics about various structures and be harnessed for drone-based imagery of roads, bridges and buildings via AI computer vision.
The new USC facility is the latest in a growing list of 5G labs established by Verizon across the U.S. These destinations are consistently motivated by partnerships with clients throughout the public and private sectors — startup businesses, universities and government/military entities, among others — to see how 5G can change and expand industries.
Earlier this week, Verizon was tapped by the Department of Defense to build a private 5G network at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickham.