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Wondering what to do with 5G? Wear an exoskeleton to remotely control your robot, of course

Here’s a wearable I can finally get behind.

At Barceolona Mobile World Congress, SK Telecom of South Korea is demonstrating just how mind-boggling the speed of 5G will be. To make the point, they built a prototype of an exoskeleton that can control a robot.

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Don’t let the proximity of the human demo to the robot fool you. The signals from the exoskeleton will be able to beinstantaneously delivered over vast distances to the robot. In theory, a more substantial robot than this one can perform dangerous jobs from afar, like searching for mines in a war zone or breaking up with your live-in significant other.

5G, one of the themes of this year’s MWC, is still a distant dream for most of the world. But when widely deployed, 5G is expected to be roughly 100 times as fast as 4G. And yes, we know that most of you are still waiting for 4G. So, sorry about that.

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In the case of SK Telecom, the company is saying it plans to have trials of 5G in some parts of the country in time for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

While the rest of us are still fumbling around with our Google Glass and Apple Watch, we can only hope South Korea hasn’t built a robot army by then to control the rest of the world by then.

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