Project ARIS-6G

Abstract

As industrial environments evolve toward higher levels of automation and flexibility, reliable wireless communication and precise spatial perception become key enablers for safety, efficiency, and autonomy. Building on 5G-Advanced and the emerging 6G framework for Joint Communication and Sensing (JCAS/ICAS), the project investigates how advanced connectivity, positioning, and sensing capabilities can deliver real-time Spatial Awareness — the continuous understanding of positions, movements, and context within dynamic shopfloor
environments. This capability forms the foundation for autonomous decision-making, cooperative robot behavior,
and adaptive process control in connected industrial systems.

The applied research on next-generation wireless technologies to advance autonomous robotics and intralogistics
in ARIS-6G addresses three distinct domains:
• Communication: Optimization of 5G-Advanced and pre-6G features such as deterministic networking, multi-link
operation, and Open RAN architectures to ensure ultra-reliable, low-latency communication for autonomous
systems.
• Spatial Awareness: Development of integrated positioning and radio-sensing methods to enable high-precision
localization, environment perception, and cooperative awareness among AGVs, AMRs, and digital twins. This
includes active sensing to optimize radio-channel utilization and passive sensing to enhance environmental
perception, enabling anomaly detection and advanced spatial analysis.
• Autonomous robots in Intralogistics: Investigation of how spatially aware and connected robots coordinate
material flows, support human-robot collaboration, and enable data-driven optimization. This includes the
interplay between 5G/6G infrastructure and AMR control, with bidirectional exchanges between Service
Management and Orchestration (SMO) functions and robot layers. Mission delegation and orchestration are
complemented by feedback of environmental data — such as SLAM or IMU-based recognition — to enhance
system-level Spatial Awareness.

A Living Lab for Intralogistics, complemented by a Virtual Living Lab digital twin, provides hands-on training,
reproducible experimentation, and real-world validation up to TRL 7, fostering sustainable technology transfer for
European SMEs and industrial users. Through this collaborative environment, ARIS-6G strengthens Europe’s and
Canadas’s capabilities to bring 6G into industrial application, bridging the gap between research and deployment
in autonomous robotics and spatially aware intralogistics.