Cambridgeshire County Council CORE Project Augmented Reality Visitor Experience

The AR experience will form part of the Cambridgeshire Open RAN Ecosystem (CORE) project that is funded by the Department for Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and being delivered by a number of commercial and academic partners in collaboration with Cambridgeshire County Council as the Project Lead. The primary purpose of the CORE project is to deploy and demonstrate the capabilities of Open RAN technology within a standalone 5G network in High Demand Density locations.

The Authority, as part of the CORE project, require a bespoke venue specific Augmented Reality (AR) experience to be delivered and deployed at the Cambridge Corn Exchange that will run over the 5G Open RAN network that is being developed by the CORE project. The AR experience has a dual purpose within the project to firstly test the capabilities of a 5G Open RAN network utilising the data intensive/low latency requirements of AR technology and secondly to demonstrate how 5G Open RAN technology can support innovative technologies to generate new opportunities for a local economy.

In order for the AR experience to demonstrate value to the local economy it is essential that the experience is bespoke to the venue. The AR experience will need to be designed, developed and deployed in collaboration with Cambridge City Council who own and run the venue. It will also be vital for the successful bidder to work with the already assigned technical partners to ensure that the AR hardware/experience is successfully integrated/deployed on the 5G network and to support the testing/optimisation of the network capabilities through the use of the AR experience.

The theme of the AR experience will be to celebrate the Cambridge Corn Exchange entering its 150th year.

Output requirements include the following:

• A bespoke AR experience that will help celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Cambridge Corn Exchange. Deployable on the main ground floor (the venue layout can be found in appendix 1) by end December 2024.
• Easily deployable and removable experience that can be set-up, run and removed within a day. The experience will run on dates/times to be agreed by Cambridge City Council that fit in-between the other planned events at the venue.
• Integration of the AR experience hardware on to the 5G network that is being developed.
• Verbal and/or written data/reports on the performance of the AR experience in different operational environments and advice on how to utilise the experience to support testing.
• Maintenance and operational support of the AR experience must be included for the duration of the contract.
• AR capable hardware to deliver the experience.

The testing of the 5G Open RAN network capabilities utilising the AR experience is a key outcome of the procurement. The ability to support the integration of the AR hardware on to the network and scale up and down the number of devices/data download and upload will play a key component in understanding the network and its ability to optimise in different scenarios.

The Supplier will need to be able to articulate how AR hardware can be operated over a 5G network, this may vary from device to device, and provide guidance on how AR experience can be used to test the capabilities of the network. The supplier will additionally need experience of commercialising an AR experience.

With this in mind, the successful bidder must be able to demonstrate the following:

• Experience of the technical requirements and processes of integrating various AR capable hardware on to a 5G network including upload, download & latency requirements.
• Experience of supporting the testing of 5G networks capabilities utilising AR hardware. Previous working or reporting on government funded R&D projects would be an advantage.
• Examples of working on previous bespoke AR content creation and the processes that were followed to create the experience including project delivery timescales.
• Knowledge of how different AR capable hardware types could be used either as a standalone solution or in combination to provide an AR experience that maximises the use of 5G technology to support the capabilities of the experience.
• Experience of operating an AR experience in a “real-world” environment ensuring that all H&S requirements are met.
• Experience of the process to commercialise an AR experience.