Accelerating the Digital Transformation of Industry | Keynote by Dev Singh

On the second day of the 2022 Open Generation 5G Summit, Dev Singh delivered a keynote on the transformational power of 5G and advanced technology, the role that Open Generation plays, and what his vision for the future is. As the VP & Head of Building, Enterprise & Industrial Automation/Digital Transformation at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Singh is uniquely qualified to share his expertise in this field.  

Beginning with a brief overview of the current digital transformation and connectivity of industries, Singh dives into an explanation of what he believes is the beginning of one of the largest opportunities in history. At the cutting edge of a burgeoning technological revolution, these advancements in tech could provide an injection of $700 billion in this next decade alone. At the center of all of this, he says, is going to be AI and 5G, two essential focus points for Open Generation 5G Consortium. 

A critical element of the expanding role of 5G and AI is that AI is now moving to the edge. No longer are devices only talking to the cloud, but their intelligence is becoming more localized. This evolution to on-device intelligence is critical, as Singh points out, to the expanding presence and capability of drones flying beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). To prove the safety of drone flights, it must be possible to create a dependability outside of the cloud – as reliance on an unstable network could prove problematic in emergency situations, creating a reluctance to invest in this game-changing technology. 

Singh runs through a few specific areas where this emerging technology will revolutionize day-to-day life, ranging from HD video surveillance to mobile workstations, drilling down specifically on the critical role that 5G and UAS plays in the future of flexible manufacturing and infrastructure safety. 

To end his keynote, Singh points out the specific case of wind turbine inspections. What used to need hours to perform, putting workers in danger and limiting the collection of an essential resource by necessitating the powering down of the entire turbine during the lengthy inspection, can now be done in minutes with a drone. The impact here is not simply on the bottom line of the organization, though certainly time is money, but it also ripples throughout the ecosystem, having a tremendous impact on the economy. 

Listen to these insightful remarks on the acceleration of transformative technology here: