5G‑Enabled XR Streaming for Immersive Manufacturing and Engineering
Business challenge
Process Innovation
Sector
Electrification
Technology or capability
Process Design
Immersive technologies such as extended reality (XR) have the potential to transform how manufacturing organisations design processes, train their workforce and support live operations. However, widespread industrial adoption has been limited by the technical constraints of commercially available head‑mounted displays (HMDs).
MTC has demonstrated how 5G‑enabled XR streaming can overcome these barriers, enabling rich, high‑fidelity immersive experiences for industrial training, process design and engineering reviews—without compromising safety, comfort or performance.
Project Challenges
Industrial XR applications place significant demands on wearable hardware. High‑resolution digital models, immersive work instructions and live operational data require substantial compute power, memory and thermal capacity. In real‑world manufacturing environments, these demands exceed what standard commercial HMDs can reliably deliver.
The challenge was to enable complex, visually rich XR experiences on commercial head‑mounted displays while maintaining low and predictable motion latency, stable frame rates and comfortable ergonomics. This needed to be achieved without overheating devices, reducing battery life or compromising user safety and experience in operational and training settings.
MTC’s Solution
MTC implemented an XR streaming architecture enabled by a private 5G network, shifting intensive processing away from the headset and onto a high‑powered edge device.
A lightweight client runs on the commercial HMD, transmitting head pose, hand tracking and spatial mapping data to the edge compute platform. The edge device renders the immersive environment in real time and streams the visual output back to the headset over the private 5G network. This approach removes on‑device compute and thermal limitations while preserving a responsive, high‑fidelity XR experience suitable for industrial use.
The private 5G network at the MTC is creating new opportunities for our engineers to architect advanced digital solutions, helping to address key computing and connectivity challenges in complex OT/IT scenarios. We are proud of the combined expertise brought together with our new members, BT and Ericsson, in delivering our first 5G use cases.
Alejandra Matamoros, Technology Manager - MTC
The Outcome
The project demonstrated that commercially available head‑mounted displays can deliver rich and comfortable immersive experiences when connected to powerful edge computing via private 5G.
By offloading heavy processing from the headset, users experienced clearer visuals, smoother interactions and improved stability, without device overheating or performance degradation. This makes immersive XR practical for manufacturing applications such as training, guided maintenance, live operations management, process design and engineering development reviews.
Benefits to the Client
- High‑quality, immersive XR experiences delivered on standard commercial HMDs, avoiding the need for specialised or bespoke hardware.
- Improved visual clarity and performance, supporting faster learning, improved knowledge retention and reduced time to competence for training scenarios.
- Scalable and repeatable XR deployment through simplified device and application management within industrial environments.
- Enhanced immersive collaboration to accelerate process engineering design, development and multi‑user review activities.
