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Immersive engineering and artificial intelligence are at the core of new industrial technology offerings unveiled at CES.
Industrial automation giant Siemens has announced a new digital transformation project that it has dubbed the industrial metaverse.
The idea of the metaverse is nothing new, and there are several virtual metaverse worlds already in use around the world – but Siemens’ version is aimed not at social interaction and entertainment but at fine-tuning and monitoring industrial processes in a virtual environment.
“We envision the industrial metaverse as a virtual world that is nearly indistinguishable from reality, enabling people – along with AI – to collaborate in real-time to address real-world challenges,” said Siemens chief executive Roland Busch in a statement following a keynote address at the CES electronics show in Las Vegas.
“This will empower customers to accelerate innovation, enhance sustainability and adopt new technologies faster and at scale, leading to a profound transformation of entire industries and our everyday lives. Together with our customers and partners, Siemens is proud to announce new products that will bring the industrial metaverse a step closer to all of us.”
Siemens’ partners in the project include Sony, Nvidia, Microsoft, AWS, as well as the Alliance for OpenUSD. Nvidia will supply the computing smarts to power the metaverse side of things, while Microsoft will contribute work on OpenAI tech to Siemens’ own Industrial Copilot collaboration tool.
Amazon Web Services, meanwhile, will work with Siemens on integrating generative AI into industrial applications.
Outside of the industrial arena, Red Bull Racing and Sony will collaborate on bringing the same industrial metaverse tech to F1 racing to improve the design and optimisation of true high-speed technology.
One of the key components of Siemens’ industrial metaverse is the combination of Sony’s new spatial content creation system and the Siemens Xcelerator software suite. Together with the use of a soon-to-be-released head-mounted display, engineers and designers will be able to explore and fine-tune their creations in a virtual environment before deploying them to the real world, where the same tech can monitor them in real time.
“At Sony, we are passionate about empowering creators with cutting-edge technologies, and in the field of spatial content creation, we have thrived in innovating the way they work by utilising our proprietary motion and display technologies,” Yoshinori Matsumoto, executive deputy president and officer-in-charge of technology and incubation at Sony, said in a statement.
“By combining our technologies and Siemens’ expertise in engineering, we are excited to enable more immersive engineering that redefines the daily workflow of designers and engineers. The high-quality, realistic rendering and intuitive interaction will give creators tools to pursue a more immersive creative processes that fuel further innovation in the industrial metaverse.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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