The world’s largest companies are racing to supercharge industrial digitalization in the Metaverse.
While the Metaverse is often thought of as Mark Zuckerberg’s playground, companies of all sizes and from different sectors are now applying virtual and augmented reality technologies to industrial settings in what’s known as the Industrial Metaverse.
In an Industrial Metaverse, workers and managers can use virtual and augmented reality tools to visualize and simulate complex processes, identify potential safety hazards, and improve efficiency. For example, engineers might use a virtual reality headset to inspect and test a new product design before it is built, while factory workers might use augmented reality glasses to receive real-time instructions on assembling a product.
Revenues for industrial digital twin and simulation and industrial extended reality are expected to reach $22.7 billion by 2025, as organizations use tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, edge computing, and extended reality to accelerate digital transformation, according to data provided by ABI Research.
Many big name companies feel that the Industrial Metaverse has the potential to revolutionize the way we design, build, and operate physical systems, making them safer, more efficient, and more sustainable.
In March 2023, Microsoft and NVIDIA have joined forces to give hundreds of millions of Microsoft enterprise users access to industrial metaverse and AI supercomputing resources via the cloud. Under the collaboration, NVIDIA (via Microsoft’s Azure service) will host two new cloud offerings.
The two companies are hoping to help companies digitise their operations, engage in the Industrial metaverse and train advanced models for generative AI and other applications.
'Supercharge industrial digitization'
“The next wave of computing is being born, between next-generation immersive experiences and advanced foundational AI models, we see the emergence of a new computing platform,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said recently.
NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang told investors that the company’s AI and Omniverse offerings “supercharge industrial digitalization.”
Other companies are applying technologies within the Industrial Metaverse to solve real world problems.
DarkPulse is a company that uses advanced laser-based monitoring systems to provide rapid and accurate monitoring of infrastructure before catastrophic failure including temperatures, strains and stresses allowing for advanced monitoring of infrastructure in Smart Cities.
CEO Dennis O’Leary told Proactive that the Industrial Metaverse is essentially the commercial version of the Metaverse.
On that front, DarkPulse created a digital twin of a Sacramento, California bridge and loaded that into the Metaverse. Meanwhile, in the real world, they put the sensors into the bridge itself – layering real world data over the digital twin.
“Anybody from anywhere in the world that has access can virtually walk that bridge using a VR headset,” O’Leary explained. “What we're doing is the structural integrity of the bridge, so over its lifespan, we'll actually be able to see environmental factors and things like vehicle traffic, that cause additional wear and tear. We can alert to these anomalies before there's a catastrophic failure.”
Organizations need to start preparing for Metaverse
The greatest share of enterprises and communication service providers believe the metaverse will be here within 10 years and the organizations need to start preparing now, according to a joint survey by Nokia and Gartner Peer Insights.
However, it also raises important ethical and social questions, such as how to ensure worker privacy and data security in virtual environments, and how to ensure that these technologies benefit all members of society.
Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas