In January 2024, at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES), Siemens unveiled technological partnerships with NVIDIA, SONY, and Amazon to make the industrial metaverse a reality. With Apple displaying their latest Vision Pro XR headset and a lot of start-ups bringing in various proof-of-concept use cases to existence, we are at a point where the industrial metaverse is not a hype word anymore. We should investigate what has been happening leading up to this moment and what opportunities lie ahead for our local economy in this new era of Industry 4.0.
Let us first understand various concepts that are enabling the industrial metaverse. With its introduction in 2003, the ‘Digital Twin’ idea has come a long way. Due to the advancement of various computer technologies, we can now represent products, plans, and even an entire city as 3D digital models with high fidelity. The industrial metaverse takes things up a notch by enabling users to interact with these models in real-time in a virtual world that is indistinguishable from reality. This will open doors for real-time collaboration across geography, prototype and experience the products even before their physical existence, and reduce downtime and waste by first detecting and resolving issues in the virtual world. When deployed at scale, this technology will profoundly change how we interact with our industrial environment today.
Multiple technological breakthroughs in high-fidelity simulation, GPU and edge computing, artificial intelligence, 5G connectivity, Virtual Reality (VR), and the Internet of Things (IoT) have converged to pave the way for the industrial metaverse. At the core of this technology, we have various proprietary software tools to build 3D digital worlds with which users can interact as seamlessly as the real world. On the user end, one will have an extended reality (XR) headset with various sensors attached to one’s periphery to help have an immersive experience when interacting with the digital twins. Technologies like edge computing and 5G will enable high-speed transfer of information and high-fidelity visual representation of the environment. Modern simulation technologies will provide real-time processing of the interaction and rendering of the results. Together, these technologies will create a hyper-immersive experience for the user by blending the real and virtual worlds and facilitating unprecedented levels of creativity and innovation.
According to ABI research, revenues for industrial digital twin and simulation and industrial extended reality will hit $22.73 billion by 2025, and the market cap of the industrial metaverse is expected to reach $100 billion by 2030. The key enabler of this technology, the digital twin, is projected to have a market growth beyond $180 billion.
In 2022, Siemens built its first digital native factory in Nanjing, China. The 73,000 square-meter factory was digitally planned and simulated before concrete was poured. A digital twin of the factory was built from the ground up using factory data, production line data, performance data, and building information from the existing sites. A suite of plant and process simulation tools was used to analyze bottlenecks in production and optimize materials flows and employee walkways. Employees used VR glasses to immerse themselves in the virtual factory and were able to provide important feedback to fine-tune the design.
This virtual environment also allowed the designers to test various layouts to find the optimum design that led to 40% less space usage for the same output. Also, as the structural changes during these reworks were limited to only the virtual world, it eliminated a lot of waste. It lowered the environmental impact of the factory, thus promoting sustainability. Only after getting green lights from all the stakeholders who intensively tested the virtual factory did real-world activities begin. However, the digital twin is still rigorously maintained as any upgrade to the real factory is first studied in the virtual world to ensure all the systems and processes work optimally.
Last year, BMW unveiled its first-ever digital plant using NVIDIA’s Omniverse technology. The real-world plant, a 400-hectare facility in Debrecen, Hungary, is expected to come into production in 2025 and produce approximately 150,000 vehicles annually. BMW spent two years creating a comprehensive digital version of the 2-billion-euro plant. The ongoing virtual commissioning will allow them to optimize the complex industrial process of EV production and iron out all the kinks before laying down one brick. BMW also successfully leveraged Omniverse technology in one of its existing plants, where new industrial robots were tested in virtual reality before installation. This allowed the vendor and the in-house engineers to check out the robots’ placements and movements, ensure they work seamlessly with existing installations, and save time and cost by avoiding rework.
Even though the industrial metaverse is still nascent, we want to explore what opportunities exist beyond these examples and where we can reap their benefits. In May 2023, Deloitte and the Manufacturing Leadership Council (MLC) studied the industrial metaverse to identify use cases for industrial metaverse. Virtual plant tours and immersive training can be conducted for new hires without exposing them to safety-critical environments, thus reducing risks. Virtual prototyping and product development is another area where various stakeholders and multidisciplinary teams can synchronously interact with the product in a metaverse without co-location. Virtual inspection and maintenance are other areas gaining traction, where drones are used to capture footage for hard-to-reach areas of the structure or plants. The data is later used to create a metaverse where teams can inspect. A recent briefing paper published by the World Economic Forum also reiterated the value addition that can be achieved using the industrial metaverse for training, product development and testing, monitoring, and maintenance.
The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry can also benefit from leveraging this technology in various stages of the projects. Instead of long video calls and frequent on-site inspections, all the key stakeholders can meet inside the metaverse, exchange ideas, and monitor progress. Integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) and the Metaverse can provide new areas of coordination, ease asset management, and improve efficiency throughout the project lifecycle.
With any new technology, we should be asking about the benefits and opportunities for the local industrial ecosystem. The industrial metaverse offers opportunities for both the user and the developer. Like the example from BMW, new factories can be built in the metaverse and inspected before pouring a single bucket of concrete. It will reduce waste, rework, and miscommunication between the engineering teams.
For engineering firms, building a digital twin and letting the clients have an immersive experience of the product or installation will shorten the feedback cycle and catch errors of both omission and commission. Just to clarify, we are not talking about looking at design documents on a computer screen or seeing a 3D mock-up of a product; the industrial metaverse offers a blend of reality and the virtual world in a novel way that has not been experienced before. Smart factories will be the propeller of Smart Bangladesh, and the industrial metaverse is the way to build smart factories efficiently.
On the technology development front, this writer believes we have many more opportunities. The entire metaverse technology stack is highly dependent on software engineering and related disciplines. Bangladesh already has a highly reputed and thriving software development workforce. Local entrepreneurs should look for opportunities to collaborate in interior and exterior markets. Companies like NVIDIA, Apple, and Sony have publicly available software development kits (SDKs) that can be built on top of their hardware and software platforms. Partnering with local engineering firms to create proof-of-concepts can lead to a better understanding of local use cases and, eventually, fully functional tools generating revenues. International partners such as start-ups working in this space can also open doors for new ventures. Educational organizations should also take note of this emerging technology and start offering some courses to their students to make them future-ready.
Sameeul Bashir Samee is a computational scientist currently working at the National Institutes of Health in the United States.
