Toward 6G: The Internet of No Things

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In contrast to previous generations, future 6G mobile networks will be transformative and will revolutionize the wireless evolution from connected things to connected intelligence. 6G will play a significant role in advancing Nikola Tesla's prophecy that "when wireless is perfectly applied, the whole Earth will be converted into a huge brain." Toward this end, 6G will provide an information and communication technologies infrastructure that enables end users to perceive themselves as being surrounded by virtually zero-latency services and immense cognitive capabilities. In 6G, there is also a strong notion that the nature of mobile terminals will change, whereby intelligent mobile robots are anticipated to play a more important role. Furthermore, 6G envisions user experiences to go from well-explored audio-visual communications to the delivery of all five human senses as well as other senses in line with the IEEE Digital Senses Initiative, leading to a deepened personalization of 6G services that could predict future events and provide good advice for the user. In this proposal, we argue that 6G should not only explore more spectrum at high-frequency bands but, more importantly, converge driving technological trends - most notably, multi sensory extended reality (XR), connected robotics, human-machine interaction, and decentralized blockchain technologies - to usher in the so-called 6G post-smartphone era, given that smart wearables are increasingly replacing the functionalities of smartphones. We also note that according to the world's first 6G white paper published by the 6Genesis Flagship Program, 6G will become more human-centric than 5G, which primarily focused on industry verticals. While 5G was supposed to be about the Internet of Everything, to be transformative 6G might be just about the opposite of Everything, that is, Nothing or, more technically, No Things. By exploiting the convergence of artificial-intelligence-enhanced multi-access edge computing, intelligent mobile robots, and blockchain technologies, this proposal will help realize the Internet of No Things as an important stepping stone toward ushering in the 6G post-smartphone era. Specifically, our proposed research activities aim at achieving the following three objectives: (i) Persuasive computing via social robots in locally connected human-avatar/robot collectives, (ii) design and investigation of trustworthy blockchain oracles for on-chaining collective human intelligence onto smart contracts, and (iii) deep Multiverse XR for unveiling the true nature of reality hidden by evolution. The importance of convergence of emerging key technologies lies at the heart of the 6G post-smartphone era with standards and enabled devices anticipated to roll out around 2030. This new platform will include the collective intelligence of all humans combined with the collective behavior of all machines, plus the intelligence of nature, plus whatever behavior emerges from this whole.