en.Wedoany.com Reported - Vodafone has deployed a robotic arm named 5G+ Serve at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in the UK, which uses network slicing technology to replicate players' serves in real time, aiming to demonstrate the low-latency capabilities of 5G networks.

The robotic arm is located on courts 13 to 15 at Wimbledon Park, near the All England Club. It utilizes network slicing technology to ensure a downlink speed of 32 Mbps and an uplink speed of 8 Mbps, enabling rapid reception of required data.

When a player serves at Wimbledon, the official broadcast signal captures the footage and streams it via network slicing. Vodafone collects telemetry data using pose estimation, object tracking, and optical character recognition technologies, allowing the 5G+ Serve to release the ball less than one second after it leaves the player's racket, replicating the serve motion.

Vodafone further noted that the ability to instantly replicate the serve depends on the real-time nature of the official broadcast signal and any delays it may encounter. The system also stores serve records from past Wimbledon matches, allowing challengers to recall historical serve trajectories.

Research conducted by Vodafone shows that 34% of the UK public believe they could return a professional serve with proper training, with 43% of men and 51% of those under 35 holding this view. 10% of people said they could succeed in fewer than three attempts, while 19% believed no training at all was needed to return a professional serve. The research also revealed that 24% of men thought they could defeat a professional player at Wimbledon if given time to prepare. This data reflects a certain level of confidence among the public in their own tennis abilities.