On February 12, 2026, researchers from SMARTNESS visited Ericsson’s 5G Open Innovation Center in Indaiatuba, São Paulo (Brazil) for a technology immersion with a clear goal: turning 5G connectivity into real-world impact for society. The visit strengthened the bridge between applied research and industry challenges, opening new avenues for the co-creation of proofs of concept (PoCs) and experiments with strong scaling potential.
Designed as an open innovation hub, the center brings together infrastructure, ecosystem, and expertise to validate, showcase, and accelerate 5G solutions across strategic verticals—especially industry, utilities, and critical operations. Beyond technology demonstrations, the space is structured to shorten the path from idea to prototype to adoption, connecting companies, researchers, and partners in an impact-driven collaboration model.
Throughout the agenda, multiple collaboration formats were presented, ranging from the validation of 5G-native solutions to enabling assets for digital transformation, such as robots, XR devices, cameras, and sensors. The approach is straightforward: co-creation grounded in real business challenges, with measurable outcomes and rapid learning cycles.
Collaboration tracks explored
Among the topics discussed, a key highlight was the HMS Io-Link sensor kit with a 5G router, viewed as a strategic platform to expand experiments with new sensors, integrations, and use cases. The goal is to advance scenarios that can be monitored through a dashboard, enabling consistent and comparable assessments in industrial environments.
Another standout was the Immersive VR Factory demonstration, focused on immersive experiences for corporate settings. Building on this use case, SMARTNESS and Ericsson discussed integrating Network Observability into the solution, defining metrics and telemetry capable of comparing 5G versus Wi-Fi, identifying bottlenecks, and uncovering opportunities to optimize performance and differentiate connectivity in VR/XR applications—an important step toward demonstrating, with data, when and how 5G delivers competitive advantages.
By the end of the visit, both teams reinforced a shared agenda to accelerate applied experimentation, connecting industrial sensing (Io-Link) and immersive applications (VR/XR) through an evidence-driven approach grounded in observability, telemetry, and performance benchmarking across 5G networks.
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