Nordic AV comes in from the cold

AV Magazine

article here

A conventionally conservative AV market is being shaken up by increased military spend, and a trend towards experiential applications.

Riedel Communications and Nordic media technology company, Media Tailor delivered broadcast, AV, and communications infrastructure aboard Royal Caribbean International’s newest vessel - Star of the Seas.

While the Nordics (encompassing Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland – and, for the purposes of this article, the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland) tend to forge ahead in technology and market developments, it appears that it’s in a phase of rearrangement.

“A good business climate, but currently shifting,” sums up Torbjorn Mahler, product and marketing manager, Panasonic Projector and Display. “We see new technologies taking over established places in the market. At the same time many new use cases offer existing technologies a new grow potential.”

Katrin Kerber, local account manager at Matrox Video reports a similar trend. “Pro AV verticals in the Nordics truly behave differently,” she says. “You cannot define the market into strict verticals.”

Philippe Genar, sales manager Northern Europe, Riedel Communications says: “The Nordic AV market is shaped by a highly technology-driven culture and a strong willingness to challenge established workflows. Customers are not focused on repeating legacy approaches. Instead, they actively explore how new technologies can improve quality, flexibility, and operational efficiency.”

James Kennedy, who runs operations for Peavey Commercial Audio, reports a noticeable decline in spending in 2025 but a more positive outlook for 2026.

“While investment in new technology continues, purchasing decisions tend to favour well-established brands, making brand awareness a key factor in market traction. This can slow adoption for less visible manufacturers and limit rapid growth compared to more aggressive or cost-driven markets elsewhere in Europe.”

Immersive applications
What we’re seeing, and this won’t be unique to the region, are technologies conventionally pinned to one vertical now bleeding across into others. The most striking example are immersive AV spaces in corporate and education used “to improve experiences within environments, like car manufacturers, exhibition halls and universities,” says Mahler. “Many new customers are following in the footsteps of larger entertainment experiences, and we see a clear spill-over of this into the more traditional markets.”

Mahler goes further and thinks that developments in immersive entertainment are only just beginning, and that we’ll likely see more implementations of the physical fused with digital and multisensory experiences in other markets.

“Traditionally very different markets like surveillance/control rooms, visualisation studios at universities, advanced ship and vehicle simulators and sport simulators are adopting immersive technologies.”

This is supported by Genelec’s Head of Business Development, Gaurav Narula who says: “Museums are a key vertical in this region as they are increasingly focusing on creating immersive, experience-driven environments rather than traditional static exhibitions. High-quality audio is essential for storytelling, spatial sound, and smooth integration within architectural spaces.”

Venue owners are placing greater emphasis on delivering a “complete, holistic experience” to end users, he adds. “This means creating immersive environments that go beyond just sound or video. In some cases, additional sensory elements – such as aromas or fragrances – are incorporated to enhance the overall experience.”

Cautious optimism

Judging the region “generally pragmatic, quality-focused, and risk-aware” Kennedy cites experience-driven venues, particularly theatres, as a key trending vertical “driven by the push for more immersive audience experiences and continued investment in cultural infrastructure. This is further supported by growing interest in modern, energy-efficient AV systems as venues replace ageing installations.”

Calling business “stable and mature” Kim Nedertorp, sales manager, DPA Microphones adds: “While uncertainty and economic pressures like inflation have introduced some short-term caution, the region remains structurally strong.”

Johan Hoel, sales and business development manager at Netgear says the region is experiencing “exceptional momentum” having begun a “significant expansion roughly four years ago with no signs of slowing down.”

This trend is reinforced by customer priorities around “sustainability, longevity, and energy efficiency,” he says. Sustainability is already a key purchasing criteria in many public and private projects “reflecting a strong Nordic mindset and values,” reflects Narula.

Arctic Circle
Military spend is on the increase across the northern hemisphere with instability felt acutely in countries neighbouring the Arctic Circle. “The biggest increase has been in Norway,” notes Lightware’s representative Kjetil Pettersen.

2025 marked an “all-time high” for Lightware in the Nordics driven by projects for military/defence, universities and oil and gas. “Based on our technology portfolio and solutions, USB-C, video distribution for both CAT and fibre, as well as BYOD/BYOM integration, will play an important role,” he says.

Kennedy expects Sweden to increase investment spending on military and defence infrastructure. “After a prolonged period of limited investment, the expansion and modernisation of military facilities is generating new construction and refurbishment projects which typically require AV systems for command centres, training environments, and secure communications.”

Subtle differences
Esports has emerged as one of the most active and influential pro AV verticals in the Nordics with significant investments in advanced production environments.

“The sector’s technical demands – high reliability, low latency, and tightly integrated audio, video, data, and communications workflows – are pushing production standards forward,” says Genar. “As a result, esports is acting as a trendsetter beyond its own ecosystem, increasingly influencing adjacent markets such as live events, entertainment venues, and even traditional broadcast.”

Region wide there’s a growing trend for more advanced light festivals and events as well as theme parks “utilising light and projection mappings to attract customers who are also visiting in the darker period of the year,” says Mahler. “In projection we see an increased selection from customers of solutions in higher brightnesses due to a noticeable decrease in price in both LCD and DLP.”

Aside from the capital cities, prime pro AV hotspots identified by Kerber are Göteborg and the Lund/Malmö region in Sweden, Trondheim, Bergen and Stavanger in Norway, as well as Tampere in Finland.

But the Nordic countries are vast, so it is possible to have high end AV installations almost all over the region. “Remote parts of these countries can still house large industries like mining, military or tourism,” says Mahler. “AV is used by many different customers and will therefore also follow into remote areas.”

Country by country
Norway stands out for its concentration of larger-scale public projects, according to Hoel. It was an early adopter of AV-over-IP technology in the region, setting the pace for others to follow.

Norway leads in ambitious entertainment and public sector investments: theatres, operas, courthouses, and large governmental projects dominate its landscape, with project sizes notably larger than those of other Nordic countries, he says. “Norwegian governmental and cultural projects continue to expand, with new arenas also emerging across the country.”

There are two important reasons for this: firstly, the proximity of the production and R&D departments enables the company to maintain quality and keep its promises. “Second, our company is part of the wider society which can inspire people globally, and we want to make a constructive impact on the community around us,” he says.

Finnish market dynamics are particularly noteworthy. Historically conservative about adopting new tech, the country has “transformed dramatically and is now experiencing explosive growth, with significant investment in municipalities, universities, and new arenas,” reports Hoel.

Finnish customers demonstrate newfound confidence in modern infrastructure, evidenced by their rapid shift from passive observation to active deployment of AV-over-IP solutions.

“This cultural shift in Finland represents one of the most significant changes in Nordic pro AV adoption patterns in recent years, with the market transitioning from extremely cautious to almost outpacing Norwegian adoption rates,” he adds.

Finnish municipalities and universities are currently in active tender periods, representing substantial and immediate investment opportunities.

Sweden maintains a steady pace with predominantly small- to mid-sized projects, while Denmark shows consistent growth, according to Hoel, “with 90 per cent of projects remaining relatively small but advancing at a reliable pace.”

Tight public sector budgets
Nedertorp says public-sector spending for cultural applications in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark has “tightened unevenly, impacting demand from publicly funded institutions. Simultaneously, cross-border operations are increasing, with pan-Scandinavian players becoming more common, smoothing out country-specific fluctuations.”

Kennedy highlights nuances between Sweden and Finland “which both tend to be early adopters in collaboration tech and digital infrastructure, particularly within corporate and public sectors” and Norway “which often benefits from strong public investment capacity, supporting large-scale projects.” Denmark, he suggests: “Shows a high focus on design integration and sustainability.”

There are differences in channel, too. While AV integrators in Denmark seems to be consolidating, Norwegian SI’s may have fragmented more by use case compared to their neighbours. “This can influence manufacturers’ views on which channel model to choose,” Kerber says. In addition to a “high technology affinity” across the region, Matrox reports a strong level of standardisation and an established vendor ecosystem.

“Open standards for media over IP are becoming increasingly popular in all four countries even in different installations,” she says.

Global healthcare company Novo Nordisk in Denmark and Norwegian broadcaster NRK are upgrading their facilities to ST2110 from a variety of different manufacturers. Helsinki’s Landmark Finlandiatalo music and exhibition venue has invested in an IPMX infrastructure in its convention centre.

“Norwegian theatres are also beginning to roll out open standards,” such as the Trondelag Theater and Den Norske Opera and Ballet, an architectural landmark in the Oslofjord.

d&b audiotechnik recently expanded its local business presence by acquiring pro-audio distributor Arva Group, with offices in Stockholm, Malmö, Aarhus, Oslo and Helsinki.

“Both brands share the belief in education and focus on relationships,” notes territory manager, Christian Orcin-Torner who thinks the move will get d&b closer to the customer.

“We want to offer more tailored solutions, strategic expertise, and direct access to our latest innovations throughout the whole region.”

Overall, trust, performance, and brand reputation remain central across the Nordics.

CASE STUDY 1: Star of the Seas
Built in Finland for Royal Caribbean International’s cruise fleet, the Star of the Seas (pictured left) features multiple entertainment venues and highly demanding production environments across the vessel.

The installation, delivered in collaboration with Media Tailor, includes a broad Riedel technology footprint, incorporating hi human interface, MediorNet, Artist, Bolero, and PunQtum, supporting integrated AV, data, and communications workflows at scale.

The project was recently recognised with the ‘Applied Technology’ award at ISE.

CASE STUDY 2: Centria University
Finland’s Centria University in Kokkola has adopted a technology standard based around Lightware’s Taurus UCX-4×3-HC40-BD solution to unify classroom devices.

“The lack of permanent hybrid devices, such as microphones and cameras, and the need to set up the room peripherals for every class, was a huge drain on teachers’ time and caused stress,” explains Centria’s AV and education specialist, Janne Torvikoski.

“Our goal was to make the teacher’s life easier, so they could go into the classroom, connect their laptop to the camera and the smart microphone and enjoy laptop charging.

 

AV Interview: Jack Cornish, Technical Director, Tateside

AV Magazine

article here

Tateside doesn’t aim to be the biggest integrator, but it would like to be the most respected for quality, care and integrity. Driving this ambition is Jack Cornish who has led the London-based AV consultancy and integrator through record growth, scaling the team to 24 people whilst delivering bespoke solutions for commercial and creative environments.

Cornish’s own career journey reflects deep dedication, not just to his business but to raising industry standards. Numerous testimonials shared with AV Magazine call out not just his technical expertise and forward-thinking innovation, but genuine care for his clients and team.

So what makes Jack tick?

“Culture is everything to us. I used to hire purely on skillset and learned quickly that wasn’t enough. Now it’s about whether we’ll work well together. You spend more time with your colleagues than your family – chemistry matters.”

Musical roots
It’s worth exploring Cornish’s route into the industry. At school, he loved sport and excelled in music, attaining Grade 8 on the clarinet. “Music was a huge part of my life. A lot of my close friends still come from that world. I played with Bromley Youth, toured around Europe, and performed at a pretty high standard.”

At the same time he started to rebel against classical music and fell in love with electronic dance tunes. “I produced music electronically – probably ripping software at the time – and DJing at weekends to make money. From about eighteen to my early twenties, I ran a fairly successful mobile DJ business. This really sparked my interest in loudspeakers, sound systems, and technology, alongside writing and performing music.”

Although university was a logical next step, Cornish was unconvinced. A music technology degree didn’t excite him because a lot of it seemed like things he was already doing. Plus, “I wanted to start earning money.”

Old school opportunity
Then an opportunity came up at his old school which was starting a new music programme, had received a large government grant, needed someone to build a studio and act as a music technician. “I went straight from school into working in a school at around nineteen, with a huge budget and very little idea what I was doing.”

Over four years, he ended up designing studios, technology classrooms, and running the technical side of music education. “I even became an associate music teacher, but I knew teaching wasn’t my long-term career path. I always thought I’d end up working in a studio in Soho – post-production, TV, film, that kind of thing.”

When he did get a job as a runner at a Soho post-production house he only lasted six months. “It was a shock going from a supportive school environment to the reality of the industry – being shouted at, getting people’s lunches – and I realised it wasn’t for me.”

 

Tateside start
At that point in 2008, Jack’s brother-in-law offered Cornish a job at Tateside. Back then, it was a three-person outfit operating out of the Blue Fin Building, Southwark with a major contract supporting publisher – Time Inc.

“We handled infrastructure and meeting room support, and I was thrown into AV fairly quickly. For the first year, I was purely a technician – pulling cables, and doing installs. We learned by saying ‘yes’ and figuring it out afterwards. Trial and error, lots of mistakes, but always making it work.”

The decline of print media – impacting Time Inc’s business – hastened Tateside’s need to diversify. Cornish started doing local outreach, spotting new developments, and chasing opportunities. That led to some lucky breaks. One was landing work at NEO Bankside, a residential development on the South Bank which attracted Cornish “because it felt more accessible. It had Lutron client control, multi-zone audio and TV distribution before smart TVs were mainstream. Every source had to be centralised.”

The second was work for Gordon Ramsay for whom Tateside did repeat business outfitting bespoke restaurants.

Eventually, Tateside moved out of Blue Fin into its own office. “That was a big moment,” he recalls. “Suddenly we weren’t supported by a single contract anymore. We were on our own.”

Today, around 95 per cent of its work is enterprise and corporate. Clients range from global companies seeking enterprise-wide AV strategies to boutique hospitality chains. Recent work includes global partnerships with workplace providers WeWork and Halkin, several new Soho House venues, the new BLOODsports bar in Covent Garden and ongoing AV support for the Haas F1 team.

“Culture is everything to us. I used to hire purely on skillset and learned quickly that wasn’t enough. Now it’s about whether we’ll work well together. You spend more time with your colleagues than your family – chemistry matters.” Jack Cornish

Room to grow
The intense and stressful early days of learning – “Friday nights where nothing works and you fix it under pressure” – has segued into a more measured and mature approach that only comes with experience.

“There’s still room to make mistakes, but within a safety net. Our junior engineers are always paired with senior engineers. Problems escalate through commissioning engineers before landing with senior staff. Manufacturer training has improved massively. Engineers can now go on courses and come back with real skills – but nothing quite replaces real-world pressure. A lab environment isn’t the same as a live site with someone talking in your ear and a handover tomorrow morning,” says Cornish.

Arguably, Cornish’s career mirrors the recent professionalisation of the AV industry. “When I started, I didn’t really know about ISE, InfoComm, or trade bodies like AVIXA and CEDIA. The industry felt fragmented and unprofessional in places. Now there’s far more training, standardisation, and cohesion,” he says.

“Social media has played a big role too — for better and worse. It forces visibility and accountability. Companies have to show their work, their values, and why clients should trust them. It can be toxic, but it’s also accelerated professionalism across the industry.”

Under his leadership, Tateside invests heavily in staff development, from funding certifications to encouraging cross-disciplinary learning, and fostering a culture of curiosity, autonomy and trust. As they grow, preserving this culture is central to the strategic plan.

“We’re lucky to have great staff retention. This Christmas we celebrated two 10-year anniversaries and several five-year ones. We invest heavily in socials – about 24 a year – because we value being together. We also try to keep things fun. Music plays a big role. We’ve hosted club nights in the office, built our own setups – things that reconnect people with why they got into AV in the first place.”

Of Tateside’s 24 staff only three are women. It’s something Cornish is trying to change. “It’s my dream to find a female engineer,” he says.

“We find that a lot of new talent have a passion for music, or DJing and are therefore generally interested in sound. I think we can channel this passion into AV by showing them how what they love translates into the professional and corporate environments.”

Although they habitually outfit meeting rooms for hybrid communication, Cornish sees tremendous advantages in his own staff working in the office.

“My fellow directors and I work five days a week in the office but of course we are flexible. We’re not dinosaurs and we also have families so we recognise there is a balance. But we hope we create a culture where people want to be here. It’s not good enough to come into an office which is used by just a handful of people because when people overhear conversations, jump in, collaborate – that energy is hard to replicate remotely.”

The importance of education
Cornish has also made it a priority that Tateside gives back, whether that’s through pro bono work, donating equipment to underfunded schools, hosting unique AV networking events (such as Lateside nights) or participating in outreach with education charities to demystify AV careers for young people.

Cornish remembers his own early challenges in the industry and is driven to make that path smoother for others.

“The outreach to schools is particularly important because no one really knows what AV is. Most people stumble into it,” he explains. “When I talk to students, I try to show how broad the industry is – from installed AV and live events to museums, immersive tech, content and corporate. It’s not about selling our company. It’s about showing that if you love music, technology, or creativity, there’s a career path here you might not even know exists.”

Explaining AV to anyone outside the business is notoriously difficult. “My mum still doesn’t really know what I do. People think we just hang TVs on walls. In reality, we sit at the intersection of networks, software, design, and experience. We work closely with architects and interior designers to hide technology, not show it – which is ironic, because we’re often dealing with ugly boxes. We’re the face of the network team.

“I think we would lose staff if all we did was churn out meeting rooms. What excites me most are the bespoke projects – high-end restaurants, LED walls, projection, custom fabrication – where we’re helping deliver an experience, not just installing kit.”

The power of AI
Jack’s best tip for keeping up with the pace of innovation is to follow social media. “LinkedIn is my doom-scroll at night. That’s where I see what other companies are doing, what’s working, what tools people are adopting. I’ll often forward things straight to the team and say, ‘Can we look into this?’ Trade shows are still valuable, but to me they’re more about the people as technology now.”

Artificial Intelligence might not seem to impact the physical nuts and bolts of an SI but you’d be mistaken. “We’re not monetising AI yet, but we’re definitely using it. I’m particularly interested in how AI can support service – analysing years of tickets and suggesting faster, better responses. It’s already changing how people work. We’ve had engineers programme integrations using AI code that previously would’ve required outsourcing.

“That’s huge but I’m also aware that maybe that work I’ve kept inhouse might have gone to another contractor. I’m excited, but also cautious. AI is powerful, and we’re only just scratching the surface.”

Cornish’s goal is for Tateside to become an even more respected and trusted name in the industry – “where people know who we are and what we stand for,” he says. “We want to grow sustainably, improve efficiency, and build processes that take us to the next level. And long-term, I want a business that can run without me being involved day-to-day – even though I still love being hands-on.

“I’m most proud of the team. Seeing people grow, take on responsibility, and build careers here – that’s everything. I’m also proud of how far we’ve come.

“We started soldering racks in a basement. Now we own our own building (in Tower Hill) and work with clients I once dreamed of. I’ve made mistakes of course. Early adoption of technology has bitten me a few times. Wanting to make something work before it was ready. But those lessons shaped how we operate today.”

 

Nanorobots are poised to transform medicine

IEC E-tech

article here 

While specific standards will be required for nanobots, some technical committees have published documents in adjacent areas. Find out more about the tech  advances enabled by these minute devices, notably in the medical domain.

Sixty years after the release of the film Fantastic Voyage, science is finally going beyond fantasy with nanorobotic agents designed to traverse thousands of kilometres of vessels inside a living being, delivering drugs directly to lungs, brain or heart.

“We are using MRI scanners to navigate tiny therapeutic particles inside the body, effectively treating them like microrobots,” says Professor Sylvain Martel of the Department of Computer Engineering and Software Engineering at Montreal Polytechnique. “We can see where they are and control their trajectory using magnetic fields.”

The global nanobotics market was worth USD 9,1 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit USD 20,45 billion by 2030 with biomedicine the biggest industry driving demand. “For liver cancer, for example, we plan to introduce these particles through the hepatic artery, similar in concept to Fantastic Voyage,” says Martel. “Results are very encouraging.”

Nonetheless, the technology has yet to make it out of the lab and move on from animal trials. It is still early days and the tech is far from being produced on a wide scale. Nanorobotics holds huge potential for targeted drug delivery, but transferring the technology for human clinical use is not straightforward.

Micro or nanorobotics?

Nanorobotics itself refers to the emerging field of science and technology that deals with the design, development and control of robots at the nanoscale. In medical research and articles about advances in this area, however, the term nano and micro are used interchangeably. The term “nanomedicine” has been used for at least 15 years to describe the use of nanorobotics for performing tasks typically requiring invasive microsurgery.

At its simplest, nano and micro are measures of size. The nanoscale ranges from 1 to 100 nanometres, where one nanometre (nm) is equal to one billionth of a metre. This size is comparable to the width of a DNA molecule. A micron or micrometre is 1 000 times bigger than a nanometre and measured in μm, where 1-10 μm is the length of a bacterium.

“We often say ‘micro–nanorobotics’, but when you look at nature, the organisms that actually move – bacteria, paramecia, sperm cells– aren’t nanoscale. They’re microscale,” explains Dr Bradley Nelson, Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zürich. The body of E. coli, for example, is one to two microns in diameter, with a tail about 15-20 microns long that rotates to propel it. Sperm cells are of similar size.

When researchers build robots that they can control in a living body, they do so at the microscale, because anything smaller is susceptible to Brownian motion. “Below about a micron, random atomic impacts dominate,” Nelson explains. “Directed locomotion becomes much harder and less effective. That’s why nature evolved microscale propulsion systems, like the rotary motor in bacteria or the beating flagella in eukaryotic cells. So, for controllable movement, microscale is often the sweet spot.”

Robots the size of red blood cells

Nanorobots may conjure up images of tiny, controllable mechanical objects, and these attributes still apply in medicine. Research is inspired by the ability to use the robot-like characteristics of DNA, bacteria or other biological substances to transport and release drugs with greater efficacy than other surgical procedures. 

Bacteria were first observed in 1675, yet it took nearly 300 years to discover that they swim using a rotary motor. Inspired by this, scientists began studying the fluid dynamics of bacterial locomotion and exploring how nanotechnology could replicate some of these mechanisms. Researchers such as Howard Berg (who helped uncover the rotary motor mechanism of flagellated bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella) have described bacteria as nature’s “microrobots”.

Nelson explains, “These organisms are typically one to two microns long and have chemoreceptors that function as sensors, a rotary motor that drives their flagellum and a signalling pathway that determines whether they are moving in a favourable direction. DNA and plasmids act as ‘onboard software’, controlling protein production. In many ways, they truly are autonomous robots.”

Fabrication methods have advanced from materials such as gallium arsenide and indium gallium arsenide to polymer-based structures using nanoscale 3D printing systems. These devices are 5 to 10 microns in length, comparable in size to a red blood cell.

Standards are tackling miniaturization

While these are very far from being nano, the IEC has developed most of the standards used for motors, including the very widely employed IEC 60034 series of international standards. Some principles in these specs could probably be adapted to microscale requirements, although this remains to be seen and is very much in a future realm.

IEC TC 47 has set up a specific subcommittee to standardize micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) – miniaturization being a huge trend in electronics. Among its standards, the IEC 62047 series specifies a number of performance tests for micromaterials. IEC TC 40 Chair, Markus Schwerdtfeger, explains how miniaturization is changing the name of the game for his TC and for many others. TC 40 produces standards for capacitors for electronic circuits. “Components are becoming microscopically small, yet they must deliver the same or even higher levels of performance. For TC 40, this means enormous challenges, especially regarding thermal management and reliability in the tightest of spaces. We have to continuously adapt our testing procedures for these tiny surface-mount devices (SMD).” Read the full interview in e-tech.

IECQ, one of the four IEC Quality Assessment Systems, provides an approved component certification scheme, which ensures small components are subjected to comprehensive reliability testing to ensure their performance under various conditions, such as temperature fluctuations, vibrations, and stress.

The joint technical committee formed between ISO and the IEC focusing on IT, ISO/IEC JTC 1, has published a number of standards relating to 3D printing, including for the medical world. The IEC has also recently set up a joint systems committee with ISO, to look investigate the area of bio-digital convergence. It should examine the requirements for standards in this growing area of tech.

Control and navigation using magnetic fields

Further questions address how nanobots are tracked and coordinated and whether and how they adapt to their environment. Actuation methods include chemical propulsion and light. Researchers have also explored acoustic propulsion using ultrasound. Most work has focused on using magnetic field gradients or rotating magnetic fields.

“Magnetic control offers biocompatibility, deep tissue penetration and precise external programmability,” says Nelson. To briefly review the physics: magnetic fields can generate both torques and forces on magnetic bodies. If a magnetic dipole – such as a microrobot made of iron, nickel or neodymium-iron-boron – is placed in a magnetic field, it experiences a torque that aligns it with the field. If there is a magnetic field gradient, the dipole experiences a force that moves it toward regions of stronger field.

“We typically generate these fields using electromagnets mounted on robotic arms. One major advantage of electromagnets is that nothing mechanical needs to move, aside from electrons flowing in the coils. By adjusting the current, we can change the field strength and direction instantly. In contrast, permanent magnet systems can generate stronger fields but require physically moving large magnets, which makes them slower and less flexible.”

Scientists are testing 300 nanometre magnetic robots for brain aneurysms. These tiny surgeons are guided by external magnets, cluster together at the problem site and release blood clotting proteins in seconds.  

Martel is leading a team developing a method that uses magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) that respond to magnetic fields. “These bacteria naturally migrate toward hypoxic (low-oxygen) environments like tumours,” he says. “Once guided near a tumour with magnetic fields, they autonomously move toward the hypoxic zones and deliver the therapeutic drug directly where it is needed.”

Medical standards for MRIs

This approach may be even more powerful than the MRI-guided particles because the bacteria act as self-propelled microrobots with built-in sensing capabilities. Martel explains, “We synthesize chains of magnetic nanoparticles inside the bacteria which act like a compass needle. By creating magnetic field gradients, we can orient the bacteria in a specific direction. Unlike pulling an object directly with magnetic force, we simply align the internal ‘compass’. The bacteria then propel themselves using their own molecular motors (flagella).”

Torque-based control requires much weaker magnetic fields, with more reliance on bacteria’s natural propulsion system. According to Martel, MTB are 10 times more powerful in propulsion than typical bacteria.

To implement such systems, the patient would need to lie under fluoroscopy. Surgeons see the capsule via X-ray and steer it using precisely controlled magnetic fields. “Strictly speaking, the ‘robot’ is the entire system – imaging, magnetic control, user input – not just the capsule,” Nelson says.

IEC TC 62 is one of two medical standardization committees inside the IEC. It has produced multiple standards for the safety of medical devices – notably X-rays. The IEC 62220 series specifies the different characteristics of X-ray machines.

IECEE, the IEC System of Conformity Assessment Schemes for Electrotechnical Equipment and Components, offers testing and certification for the safety, reliability, efficiency and overall performance of electrical equipment for medical use to IEC International Standards, whether new or refurbished.

IEC TC 113 outlines the standardization of the technologies relevant to electrotechnical products and systems in the field of nanotechnology - including nanomanufacturing - in close cooperation with other committees of the IEC and ISO. Still early days, but it could embark on the standardization of nanobot requirements.

Biocompatible materials: safety is paramount

It is critical that the materials used to manufacture these nano-microrobots are proven safe and non-toxic. “We must demonstrate safety within blood vessels with no harmful side effects and controlled biodegradation within a defined timeframe,” says Martel. “Even if navigation works perfectly, you still must prove that everything is safe for patients.”

Gold, titanium dioxide and biodegradable polymers such as polylactic-co-glycolic acid have emerged as preferred materials due to their established safety profiles in medical applications. Graphene flakes can be embedded into a hydrogel polymer to create structures that respond to infrared light. “The graphene absorbs infrared radiation, generates localized heating and triggers swelling in the hydrogel, enabling controlled shape change,” Nelson explains. “This allowed us to fabricate deformable microrobots whose morphology could be dynamically controlled.”

ETH Zurich have developed a microcapsule that comprised of a polymer gel matrix, iron oxide particles (so it responds to magnetic fields); tantalum (Ta), which shows up clearly under X-ray imaging; and a drug payload (such as tissue plasminogen activator for dissolving blood clots).

Nelson explains, “The iron oxide acts as the actuator, responding to magnetic fields. The tantalum allows imaging under fluoroscopy (X-ray). The drug performs the therapeutic task. The polymer matrix holds everything together and dissolves at the target site. The strongest magnets, like neodymium iron boron, are toxic. That’s why we use iron oxide. It’s safer, though less powerful.”

Regulatory approval is a hurdle

Because R&D in this emerging technology integrates biology, chemistry and robotics, as well as involves the medical treatment of humans, regulatory approval is complicated. “If one constituent isn’t approved for human use, you either spend enormous resources getting that part approved or reformulate the whole recipe,” Martel reports. “Reformulating can delay progress significantly. “We are approaching human trials, though I cannot give a specific timeline. We are not talking about 50 years – but regulatory approval takes time.”

Regulatory frameworks governing medical nanobot deployment are evolving to address unique challenges posed by these autonomous systems. The FDA, which regulates nanotechnology chemotherapy agents in the US warns that the “very changes in biological, chemical and other properties that can make nanotechnology applications so exciting may merit examination to determine any effects on product safety, effectiveness or other attributes.”

Researchers are exploring more programmable behaviour – such as altering magnetization in situ or adding logic elements. One solution involves coercivity, the magnetic “hardness” of a material.

“At the nanoscale, coercivity can be tuned by altering the shape of a structure,” Nelson says. “We can create structures with distinct magnetic anisotropies and coercive properties. Exposing the structure to magnetic fields of varying strengths and directions allows selective magnetization. This enables programming.” A stronger magnetic field might permanently magnetize one part of the nanorobot, while a weaker field magnetizes another part with lower coercivity.

“By designing specific magnetic domain patterns and encoding magnetization vectors in different directions, we achieved behaviours such as turning motions, hovering-like dynamics and distinct deformation patterns,” Nelson says. The fact that geometry and magnetic encoding together define behaviour opens fascinating connections to robotics concepts such as motion planning, complexity and control – now implemented physically at the micro-nano scale.

What application for oncology?

Targeted drug delivery using nanorobotics is particularly suited to cancer treatment because it overcomes a major limitation of chemotherapy; less than 1% of injected drugs actually reach the tumour. The rest circulates systemically, causing side effects. With around 85-90% of cancers in localized tumours, targeted delivery makes sense.

“Imagine putting a drop of ink in the middle of a swimming pool,” says Martel. “It won’t diffuse far enough to reach the edges. Tumour blood vessels deliver drugs only about 6-8 micrometres into tissue. But hypoxic tumour regions can be 80-100 micrometres away from blood vessels. By actively transporting drugs deep into those hypoxic zones, nanorobotics solves this diffusion problem.”

In 2024, researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institute created DNA nanobots that hunt down cancer cells in mice. These robots carry a “kill switch” that only activates in the acidic environment surrounding tumours. The results: tumour growth significantly reduced with healthy cells left completely untouched. Nelson says, “Our hope with this technology is to carry very high local doses directly to the tumour – whether that’s breast cancer or a brain tumour like glioblastoma – while minimizing exposure elsewhere in the body.”

Use cases beyond biomedical: cleaning water pollution and PFAS

Beyond medicine, there are environmental applications for soft nanorobots such as cleaning toxins and “forever chemicals” like PFAS from water, removing pharmaceutical residues from hospital wastewater and cleaning oil spills. ( For more on IEC Standards relating to PFAS read this e-tech article.)

“Whenever nature evolves locomotion at small scales, it’s solving a transport problem. That principle can inspire solutions in medicine and environmental cleanup alike,” Nelson says. Researchers in the Czech Republic have developed nanobots 200 nm wide that remove 65,2% of arsenic from contaminated water in just 100 minutes. They work like tiny janitors with polymer hands, grabbing toxic molecules while powered by magnetic fields.

The invention could provide a sustainable and affordable way of cleaning up contaminated water in treatment plants, according to Martin Pumera at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. The task now is to scale up and develop nanorobots to target different chemicals or pollutants. 

Medicine is an appropriately conservative field. Any new device must be at least as safe and effective as the current standard of care. Regulatory agencies require evidence that risks are minimized. To that extent, development in nano-microrobotic agents in medicine will be incremental, except when targeting diseases for which few other options for treatment are available. In treating glioblastoma, which has an extremely low survival rate,  a wider approach may be justified

Is the race to 6G being driven by necessity, or FOMO?

IBC

article here

6G is coming and promises massive improvements in efficiency across society. But beyond those with vested interests, 6G may not justify either hype or investment. Adrian Pennington reports.

As the telecoms industry inexorably turns its attention toward 6G, the narrative feels familiar. A new generation of technology promises a leap forward in capability, a seismic wave of transformative applications that even in its initial phases will “provide immediate operational and economic benefits.”

But the real story behind 6G may be less about technological revolution and more about operational reality and a less than enthusiastic response to another round of hefty investment.

“Manufacturers would like 6G to be ‘5G on steroids’ because that justifies selling more equipment,” argues telecoms consultant William Webb. “But most operators would prefer 6G not to happen. The last thing they want is another massive 5G-style capital spend that doesn’t increase revenue.”

Webb ran R&D at UK regulator Ofcom between 2003-2007, is a former president of the IET, and co-founded IoT developer Neul which was acquired by Huawei for $25m in 2014. He now consults via his company Commcisive and authored the book ‘The 5G Myth’ which warns that the industry is sleepwalking into repeating past mistakes.

“Equipment manufacturers – companies like Ericsson, Nokia, and to a lesser extent Samsung and NEC, are primarily pushing for 6G,” he says. “Much of the 6G material circulating comes either directly from them or indirectly via research institutions they help fund, such as the 6G Flagship in Finland. Academics often derive significant funding from these vendors, so research tends to align with those interests.”

None of this is unusual since generational shifts in mobile technology have historically been vendor-led. What’s different this time is the financial backdrop.

“Operators are still working to monetise their 5G investments,” Webb says. “Many of the high-profile 5G use cases like autonomous vehicles, remote surgery and hyper-connected smart cities have yet to scale commercially. Consumer revenues have remained largely flat. Enterprise 5G has proven more complex and slower moving than anticipated.”

Nonetheless, the industry is headed down the road to making 6G a reality. The standardised timeline will see the first 6G specifications, under 3GPP Release 21, finalised by Q4 2028. New spectrum has been identified for 6G use leading to the first anticipated commercial 6G deployments in 2030.

5G claims recycled for 6G

When the drum was being banged for 5G, all manner of applications were dangled in front of telcos that, the marketing said, couldn’t be achieved without it. These included being able to share video from sports venues, HD streaming to mobile, cloud gaming, volumetric holograms and 5G as a replacement for DTT.

In 2019, mobile operator EE was boosting 5G rollout from 2022 as enabling “truly immersive mobile augmented reality, real-time health monitoring, and mobile cloud gaming.”

A report that same year by Ovum, commissioned by Intel, said 2025 would be the ‘tipping point’ for 5G in entertainment and media. By 2028 it forecast that 5G M&E experiences will generate $1.3 trillion in revenues.

Back then BT Sport was experimenting with sports AR for the home and telcos like Orange in partnership with France Télévisions were trialling 8K live streamed virtual reality from Roland Garros. These markets never got off the ground.

Now “wide-area mass-market mixed reality” and a “high-fidelity mobile holograms” are being touted as applications for the next decade – only with 6G.

Recent tests lead Nokia to claim that 6G’s potential isn’t theoretical but “alive, tangible, and undeniable”.

Mobile data growth hype

One of the central justifications for generational change has been exponential traffic growth. Industry forecasts from bodies such as the GSMA predict significant increases in global mobile data over the next decade. It expects volumes to reach up to 3,900 exabytes per month by 2040 (equating to 140–360GB per mobile connection per month).

Webb points out that such historical projections have often overshot reality by substantial margins. He says the GSMA is incentivised to project growth because that strengthens their case for more spectrum and investment.

There is evidence to suggest that mobile data growth is beginning to level off in mature markets. Telecoms analyst Tefficient tracked trends over the decade to 2024 and found mobile data usage growth decelerating in a clear majority of countries including UK, Netherlands and Germany.

“This deceleration trend is bad news for mobile operators, and it appears to have a negative impact on the ARPU development,” it concluded. “Demand for additional mobile data is now weaker than ever.”

Reaching the same conclusion Webb says the developed world has largely reached the point of sufficiency. “Data rates beyond 10Mbps on mobile and around 50Mbps on broadband for most homes and 100Mbps for virtually all homes will not make any meaningful difference to most end users – and we have these rates now where we are appropriately connected.”

Most of the recent rises in data use have come from streaming video but Webb contends our usage is plateauing here too. “People are already watching as much video on their phones as they realistically can in a day,” he says.

Notably, there has been no “5G effect”. Webb says: “The introduction of 5G has not led to more mobile usage than would have been predicted had it not been introduced.”

Current 5G networks frequently deliver peak speeds around 200Mbps, while average user consumption remains a fraction of that.  “There’s enormous headroom. It’s not as though networks are at capacity and crying out for a dramatic leap forward.”

Predicting the AI surge

There’s currently a lot of talk about AI surging network capacity. Nokia, for example, says the transition to 6G will coincide with an “unprecedented increase in mobile data driven by the AI supercycle”.  It suggests that wide area network traffic could grow by as much as 700% by 2034, driven largely by the rapid expansion of AI workloads. Nokia also estimates that AI could represent 30% of all global traffic by then.

Webb remains unconvinced. “There’s evidence that AI may actually reduce network traffic,” he says. “Typing a query into ChatGPT and receiving text back consumes far less data than scrolling endlessly through TikTok.”

Where AI will play a starring role is in making network operations more efficient. Research from Tata Consultancy Services shows that nearly half (48%) of telco operators globally have already started enterprise-wide deployment of AI.

Chatbots are replacing call centre staff while algorithms can help detect fraud or highlight failing equipment before it breaks. These are useful cost-reductions but overall AI’s impact on telecom networks is modest.

“The real AI revolution is happening in data centres, with companies like Amazon Web Services, not in the telecoms stack itself,” Webb says.

False promise of integrated sensing

One of the advanced capabilities being baked into 6G is Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) which in simple terms means 6G won’t just connect sensors to the network but will act as a sensor itself.

“This will imbue the network with a digital ‘sixth sense’ that can extend our human senses to every point the network touches,” states Nokia in phrasing that seems to suggest it will give us superhuman power.

South Korean telco SKT was demonstrating integrated sensing technologies at MWC26 and Türk Telekom with partner InterDigital claimed a breakthrough in proving how cellular and Wi-Fi networks can combine as complementary sensing technologies. Potential use cases include the detection and tracking (of presence, motion and objects) without visual sensors.

There’s a practical application for military or police in drone detection, for example, or for civic authorities monitoring autonomous vehicles but Webb thinks the arguments don’t add up.

“One network delivering both connectivity and sensing sounds attractive and could offer efficiency gains, but we already have a technology that is better suited to sensing and that’s radar,” he says. “Radar (or lidar) operates on extremely short timescales – microseconds – whereas cellular transmissions work in milliseconds. That’s a thousandfold difference.”

To make ISAC work properly, you’d need to re-engineer radios to transmit and receive simultaneously, which is both difficult and expensive.

“You’d likely end up with a mediocre radar system that doesn’t perform well enough to justify the cost. For enterprise buyers, that raises a familiar question: is this a commercially viable capability – or a research project?”

Rather than ultra-high peak speeds or immersive virtual worlds, Webb argues that what customers would most value from investment is seamless, universal coverage.

“I want my phone to work perfectly underground, on planes, in rural areas, in crowded venues and indoors. I don’t want it to barely work but to handle a video call flawlessly without manual Wi-Fi logins or network switching.”

Technically, this is achievable by integrating an array of existing communications systems including satellite and even multiple different cellular networks.

Yet this would require cooperation between cellular standards bodies, Wi-Fi organisations such as the IEEE, and global regulators including the ITU – organisations that don’t naturally collaborate.

“Nor is integration necessarily in the commercial interests of equipment vendors,” Webb says. “It would also require rethinking cellular as just a data pipe – like broadband – rather than a voice system anchored to phone numbers.”

Alongside better coverage, a priority for operators is to lower operational costs (with greater automation and fewer network engineers), and reduce power consumption (since electricity is now over 20% of operating costs).

“There’s a tension in the standards process,” Webb says. “Vendors dominate technical specification work within standards bodies, but ultimately, they must produce something operators are willing to deploy. What we’re seeing now is that battle playing out. The emerging shape of 6G is therefore as much a commercial negotiation as a technological one.”

6G FOMO

Nokia states that “on day one, 6G will provide a multitude of 5G services in more efficient, secure, resilient and sustainable ways,” but no mobile generation lights up with a flick of a switch.

6G is being built on the shoulders of 5G and in particular 5G-Advanced. Patent developer InterDigital, another company with a vested interest in 6G, says 3GPP Release 20 serves as the “pivotal link” between 5G-Advanced and 6G.

“Many of the innovations that will eventually rely on 6G capabilities will first be developed and tested on 5G networks,” says Johan Lundsjö, Research Director Communication, Ericsson Research. “5G is where we experiment, learn, and create new services that will later evolve to take full advantage of 6G’s enhanced capabilities.”

Spectrum sharing between 5G and 6G will allow both systems to operate efficiently side by side. At MWC, Ericsson and Apple demonstrated 5G and 6G spectrum sharing. With semiconductor maker MediaTek, Ericsson also showed how the low latency features of 6G could deliver AI-enhanced XR.

At a time when geopolitics is splintering, not uniting, there is also concern at government level that their country not fall behind rivals when it comes to the latest tech. That holds true for AI and robotics, where multinationals and militaries are scrambling to gain an edge, as it does for 6G where significant early rollouts are expected in China and the Gulf states, as well as Japan, South Korea, the US and India. 

It means there is additional pressure on national carriers to invest in spectrum and kit out their infrastructure.

The key question is not whether 6G will arrive, because it most certainly will, but whether it will solve problems that genuinely matter. The lesson from 5G is not that generational shifts fail. It is that expectations can run ahead of commercial reality.

Why the future of remote production may run at the speed of light

Streaming Media

If immersive, real-time and AI-driven production is the future, the underlying network must change, argues members of IOWN.

article here

It seems only yesterday that broadcasters were rewiring their transport networks from coax to ethernet and SDI to IP but there’s momentum building to integrate new photonic capabilities into existing computing and networking infrastructure.

Technology giants including Sony, Google, Microsoft, Intel and Nvidia are backing a move to shift networks from electrical signal processing to laser light-based transport. Photonics promises superior bandwidth, ultra-low latency, far greater energy efficiency and, crucially for media production, deterministic latency.

“It’s becoming clear that existing network infrastructure wasn’t built for what’s coming next,” Katsutoshi Itoh, senior wireless communication engineer at Sony and head of its R&D lab based in Sweden tells StreamingMedia. “The bottleneck isn’t cameras or codecs — it’s the backbone. In live sports broadcasting, the next innovation on the horizon revolves around photons and transmitting data at the speed of light.”

The need for an advanced data connect system is being driven by AI – and with an eye toward Quantum compute. Data centre bandwidth is doubling every two years under the weight of AI, pushing networks beyond the limits of electrical interconnects.

“Compute systems based solely on electronics are increasingly reaching their limits,” confirms Cambridge Consultants, which is part of Cap Gemini. “The rising demands of AI and increasingly complex computing systems has intensified the development of new routes to high-performance computation.”

Chip maker Broadcom echoes the argument: “The insatiable demand for compute power in AI and high-performance computing is rapidly approaching a fundamental physical barrier: the limits of copper connectivity. As next-generation XPUs demand bandwidths soaring toward 28.8 Tbps, traditional copper interconnects are struggling to keep pace.”

Photonic computing “offers a compelling solution”, argue Cambridge Consultants. “Replacing electrons with photons across all or part of the computing system to process and store data through light waves. Since photons can process at the speed of light, photonic compute offers minimal latency and a 10-50x bandwidth improvement over traditional computing. It also has the potential to give a tenfold increase in energy efficiency as it can increase processing power without increasing the power usually associated with higher clock frequency.”

The first area of photonics adoption will be in data centres. There, according to Cambridge Consultants, photonics will no longer act simply as fibre links but as part of the photonic computing architecture through co-packaged optics (CPO), photonic interposers and high-speed optical switches.

“This will not completely replace electrical processing units, but will create a symbiotic compute system of photonic-electronic integrated circuits,” the analyst notes.

The photonics ecosystem is already building out. Nvidia and Broadcom have commercialised CPO chipsets. Other technology developers are lining up to incorporate CPO semiconductors, switchers and interconnects including Twinstar Technologies, Delta Electronics and Corning Incorporated.

Beyond the data center there are plans to create direct optical end to end communication paths for applications in industry, health, digital twins, remote learning and entertainment. This All-Photonics Network (APN) was developed by Japanese telco NTT and is now moving out of the lab and backed by 170 members of the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN).

This coalition includes telcos Nokia, Ericsson, Orange and KDDI, semiconductor and GPU makers Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia, communications infrastructure vendors Cisco, Ciena and Red Hat, device makers Samsung and Sony and internet/device making powerhouses Microsoft and Google. Its ambition is to deploy APN by 2030.

“Traditional optical networks convert signals back and forth between optical and electrical,” explains Itoh who is Chair of the Use Case Working Group at IOWN. “That adds latency, buffering and power consumption. With a photonics based we reduce or eliminate those conversions. In other words, timing you can trust.”

The implications stretch beyond the data center and IT engineering. Surging data demands for online video and interactive and immersive experiences are predicted to stretch the world’s communication networks to breaking point.

“As data demand grows exponentially and current network infrastructure struggles under growing pressure and increasing demand, the broadcast industry must look toward APNs to deliver the future of live broadcast,” Itoh says.

According to NTT, photonics can eliminate latency fluctuations. Conventional TCP/IP-based networks experience variable delays depending on network traffic, which can disrupt services that depend on real-time responsiveness. With APN, latency remains constant and predictable, enabling accurate remote operations and real-time data communication across long distances.

“In media production, from multi-camera sports coverage to immersive, free-viewpoint experiences, precise synchronisation is critical. Even minor latency variations can disrupt 3D reconstruction and real-time interactivity. Photonic networking introduces deterministic latency, meaning predictable, tightly controlled timing across the network.”

Such technology could “simplify remote production at scale” Itoh says and unlock more immersive formats, including XR and AI-assisted workflows. “As video moves from 4K to 8K and increasingly uncompressed streams, infrastructure must evolve to keep pace,” he adds.

Sony is trailing this with NTT. The Remote Media Production project, details of which were published last month on the IOWN website, aims to connect remote sites such as broadcast stations, venues, and cloud-based production resources purely optically.

“An APN removes much of the optical-electrical-optical conversion that slows and buffers traffic in traditional IP networks,” it says. “Fewer conversions mean less delay, lower power consumption and predictable timing across the network. For large-scale remote production, that could be transformative.”

Photonics could also make streaming a less power-intensive process. Streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime use huge amounts of data to facilitate cloud-enabled delivery of movies and TV shows. Using photonics could boost transmission capacity by up to 125 times while cutting latency to just 1/200 of current levels, according to NTT.

Momentum is already building in Japan where NTT is pushing photonic components into commercial networks yet the industry is not yet at the pace which IOWN would like.

While Nvidia is introducing CPO technology in two new networking chips, CEO Jensen Huang said last year that he wouldn’t use optical in the firm’s flagship GPUs because traditional copper connections were currently “orders of magnitude” more reliable.

IOWN is not suggesting replacing ethernet and IP but integrating photonics so they work together seamlessly with electronics. In practice, this involves the use of fibre throughout the network along with photonic gateways to render the entire network more efficient.

“At the heart of this is photonics-electronics convergence, often referred to as PEC. Once considered experimental, it has already been demonstrated and is now moving towards real deployment,” it states.

The APN is still at an early stage, but it represents a fundamental shift in the way communication networks are designed. By moving away from fragmented, purpose-built infrastructure to a unified optical foundation, APN could provide the backbone for future 6G networks and beyond.”

Earlier this month a group of companies including IOWN members Microsoft and Nvidia alongside Meta, OpenAI, AMD and Broadcom launched the Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) group.

This consortium of hyper-scalers aims to propel the industry toward development of a multi-vendor supply chain to ramp up optical connections.

Its mission statement: “By aligning on an open specification, the OCI MSA members are promoting a robust optical ecosystem which will ensure that the future of AI interconnects is built with a flexible, multi-vendor foundation to meet the optical interconnect needs of modern AI infrastructure.”

Richard Ho, Head of Hardware at OpenAI, added in the statement: “The continued improvement of artificial intelligence relies on scaling of AI supercomputers with more petaflops, more memory bandwidth and, importantly, more network bandwidth across larger domains requiring further reach. The OCI MSA will be critical to allow the industry to build the AI systems that will get us to AGI (artificial general intelligence).”

According to Cambridge Consultants, photonics will also play a key role in providing control, networking and interconnection of qubits for scaling up quantum computing.

Further down the line, what it calls the “holy grail” of photonic computing, will be to use photons to perform the computation part of compute.