Industrial 3D Printing, Robot Automation

Building a Software-Defined Future

Silicon Valley has long been one of the world’s leading innovation centers, and many well-known organizations establish a presence there to collaborate with the brightest minds in technology. Deutsche Telekom created its Silicon Valley Innovation Center (SVIC) in 2008 to focus on research and development in emerging network and mobile technologies. Located in Mountain View, California, the center primarily focuses on Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Mobile OS and infrastructure, and cloud networking technologies. Deutsche Telekom also has an innovation center in Israel, which specializes in artificial intelligence and persistent security protection. T-Labs, which is headquartered in Berlin, focuses on networking including 5G and FMC as well as SDN, Big Data, M2M, robotics, and mobile and network security.

Since its founding, the Silicon Valley Innovation Center has built relationships with local universities, such as Stanford University, UC Berkeley, as well as with Columbia University, University of Massachussets and commercial companies to foster work in a wide range of network, mobile, and device innovation. As a participant in Stanford’s Clean Slate Program, Deutsche Telekom SVIC research engineers developed FlowVisor—a special purpose OpenFlow controller that functions as a proxy between OpenFlow switches and multiple OpenFlow controllers in SDN infrastructures.

The SVIC also collaborated with Mozilla in developing Near Field Communication (NFC) infrastructure for mobile applications; worked with top-tier device manufacturers, chipset vendors, and other telecommunication operators; and works closely with the University of California, Berkeley Seismology Laboratory on the development of a smartphone-based Earthquake Early Warning network.

Applying Next Generation Industrial Automation Principles to Network Innovation

Because Deutsche Telekom SVIC is working at the leading edge of so many new technologies, it found itself smack in the middle of multiple disruptive digital technology trends, which may collectively be known as Industry 4.0. These technology areas include the Internet of Things, cybersecurity, the cloud, horizontal and vertical system integration, big data analytics, simulation, 3D printing, robotics, augmented reality, and at its core, networking. These technologies offer significant promise in working together to enable more efficient, secure, and economical processes. For example, cyber-physical systems can monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world, and make decentralized decisions.

Deutsche Telekom has already developed an SDN-based data center networking framework that allows operators to bring remote sites online in just hours, instead of traditional deployments that take days or weeks. Engineers now began to explore ways in which next generation industrial automation and network architectures could take advantage of this framework. Can they more easily manage network bandwidth and security policy to deliver better services for customers without having to re-design either their network or the customer’s network?

They were about to find out.

SDN Benefits, Scaled Over Miles

Deutsche Telekom SVIC had the perfect opportunity to test whether its SDN and data center framework would scale internationally and deliver the same agility, visibility, and management benefits that it delivers on smaller-scale networks. Working to demonstrate the strength and benefits of SDN WAN to its partner, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom SVIC decided to develop a prototype network that would connect the robotics and 3D printing command center in Berlin with or other non-printing robots in other parts of Germany. The goal was to enable 3D printers or robotic arms in Mountain View, or elsewhere, to instantly execute commands issued in Berlin. Deutsche Telekom already has highly reliable Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks with easily manageable Quality of Service (QoS) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). But the lab needed a way to deploy and get a series of 3D printers running—in a week.

“We were considering alternative network architectures, including setting up of Software Defined Networks between Mountain View and Berlin,” said Louis Schreier, Vice President of the T-Labs Silicon Valley Innovation Center. “However, we recognized that building a separate WAN and VPN network on top of our existing infrastructure would be cumbersome, time-consuming, and very expensive.”

Re-designing the network to introduce 3D printing or other robotics into the industrial automation infrastructure was not an option. Agility and low costs were important for the project, as well as simplicity. A network operator needed to be able to program and manage 3D printers and robots in Mountain View or elsewhere from Berlin without much training on an ongoing basis. Finally, orchestrating all of the various components needed for the 3D printing project had to be automated.