Siemens, a leader in industrial automation, just announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Sony at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The collaboration will be focused on growing the industrial metaverse — a term used to describe a virtual 3D environment where individuals and businesses can collaborate to test and design products, processes, and systems.
To begin, Sony’s latest spatial content creation system which features a XR head-mounted display and controllers for interaction with 3D objects will be combined with the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of industry software. The Siemens’ NX Immersive Designer will help engineers and designers explore concepts and designs in an immersive, borderless work environment. It is expected to become available later this year.
The partnership with Amazon Web Service is aimed at helping businesses build and scale generative AI apps. One way this will occur is through the integration of Amazon Bedrock, a service that gives users access to AI companies’ top foundation models through a single API, with Siemens’ Mendix low-code platform. Lastly, with the help of Microsoft, the developer portal from Siemens is introducing an AI chatbot to improve the experience of the development process.
According to Roland Busch, the CEO at Siemens, the industrial metaverse will be a “virtual world that is nearly indistinguishable from reality.” With the help of AI, people will be able to work together to solve “real-world challenges.” He added that these new technologies will likely cause the “transformation of entire industries” — for the better, of course.
The Rise of the Industrial Metaverse
Despite its potential to transform a myriad of industries, the industrial metaverse tends to fly under the radar when it comes to Web3 news. But it is really quite remarkable what it can do.
Here’s a brief summary of how it works:
Using digital twins, blockchain technology, and artificial intelligence, industrial metaverses can mirror and simulate individual objects like an automobile or engine, as well as much more complicated systems, such as power grids and even entire cities. Within these virtual worlds, workers, engineers, and designers can work and experiment with the goal of heightening efficiency, educating themselves, and optimizing sustainable practices within their respective industries.
At Rarity Sniper, we’ve covered several stories about the industrial metaverse. Here are the top two:
First, in January 2023, Worlds, a Web3 company that creates 4D infrastructure for industrial metaverses, announced a $21.2 million Series A1 funding round. The round was led by Moneta Ventures, and included other VC firms like Piva Capital, Capital Factory, Chevron Technology and more. Worlds Industrial Metaverse platform uses loT (the Internet of Things) sensors and digital twins to digitally represent physical objects, industrial spaces, and the people who interact with them.
Next, in November 2022, one of the largest automakers in the world, Renault, launched an industrial metaverse that employs digital twins in its factories and the mass collection of data, among other things. According to the announcement, Renault expects the industrial metaverse to save its company $330 million by 2025 through reduced delivery times and a 50% reduction in its factories’ carbon footprint.
As mentioned earlier, the industrial metaverse doesn’t get nearly as much attention as social and gaming metaverses like The Sandbox and Decentraland. But if there’s one constant in Web3 over the past couple of years, it’s that the space is constantly evolving. 2024 could be a big year for industrial metaverses, and for now, Siemens looks like it wants to lead the way.
In case you missed it: