With the popularity of the Metaverse concept, many giant companies at home and abroad have taken the lead in the layout, and many local governments in China are also actively deploying and developing Metaverse technology and related industries, trying to seize the opportunity. For the integration of various business scenarios and the Metaverse, the Wanxiang Blockchain Chief Economist Office team issued a series of research reports on the Metaverse. This article will focus on the Industrial Metaverse and explore its development path.
Author: Wang Puyu, Chief Economist Office of Wanxiang Blockchain
Review: Zou Chuanwei, Chief Economist of Wanxiang Blockchain
This paper defines the industrial metaverse from the technical dimension, proposes two parallel development paths of the industrial metaverse, "from real to virtual" and "from virtual to real", and discusses in detail the impact of industrial metaverse on material civilization aiming at improving production efficiency. influence.
Roblox went public, Facebook fully opened its Meta layout, and tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Tencent, and Ali announced their plans for the Metaverse. For a time, the Metaverse became a hot topic in the market. Just when people were immersed in discussing the consumer metaverse dominated by social interaction, games, and creation, a group of industrial companies also proposed their layout of the metaverse, which is what this article will discuss - the industrial metaverse.
Overview of the Industrial Metaverse
The development of human society has always revolved around the two main axes of material civilization and spiritual civilization, and they complement each other. From the mainstream point of view, the universe will also be like this. In the future, the metaverse will form an industrial metaverse centered on promoting the production efficiency of the material world, and a consumer metaverse centered on the sublimation of the personal spiritual world, forming a dual-center and parallel ecosystem. This article first takes industry as an example to discuss how the industrial metaverse will promote the development of material civilization aiming at production efficiency.
The Metaverse from a Technological Perspective
What is the Metaverse? Some people think that the metaverse is the union of the real world and the virtual world, some people think that the metaverse belongs to the intersection of the real world and the virtual world, and some people think that the metaverse is the mapping of multiple virtual worlds, etc. There are different conjectures about the shape of the universe, and no one can give a definite answer at present. However, a consensus has been basically formed from the technical dimension. Metaverse is that users can link with the Metaverse anytime, anywhere and with low latency through technologies such as AR and VR, based on 5G, Internet of Things, digital twin, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies. , you can use various low-code engines to create in the metaverse, and you can also immersely work, play, socialize, shop, etc. in the metaverse.
Figure 1: Metaverse ecological map (Source: Jon Radoff)
As a subset of the Metaverse, the Industrial Metaverse brings new development ideas for improving production efficiency through more efficient collaboration methods and more transparent digital management methods. Below we will discuss the industrial metaverse in detail around two dimensions: "from real to virtual" and "from virtual to real" .
The difference between "from real to virtual" and "from virtual to real"
1. Definitions
"From real to virtual" is to bring industry into the metaverse stage according to the objective development law of technology and economy. For example, in industrial design, people use two-dimensional and three-dimensional CAD software, and now VR, AR and other technologies are used to realize spatial three-dimensional design. The original purpose of innovation of these technologies is not to build a metaverse, but to meet higher-level requirements in the physical world. Design requirements.
However, the technological innovation of "from virtual to real" originates from the needs of virtual economy, and there is no direct mapping relationship between the operation process, collaboration methods and operation goals and the physical world. For example, the blockchain has brought the development of the creator economy to an unprecedented height. Some NFT works on the market, the production process and the storage of finished products are all in the digital world, and there is no specific physical object mapped to the physical world. But these digital works can be 3D printed and turned into real products in the physical world.
2. The relationship between the two
In the process of development, "from virtual to real" will affect the direction of "from real to virtual", but with the development of science and technology and the progress of human cognition, the content and direction of "from virtual to real" will be gradually revised. 20 years ago, when people read the novel "Avalanche", most people would only use it as a pastime after a meal, and at the same time satisfy the longing and yearning of the spiritual world. But with the development of communication technology, hardware technology, graphics processing, and algorithms, when people mentioned "Avalanche" again, they found that the virtual world 20 years ago was moving towards reality. When we lengthen the time axis, we will find that there is indeed a subtle relationship between "from virtuality to reality" and "from reality to virtuality".
The Industrial Metaverse of "From Real to Virtual"
In this part, we divide the discussion into two parts. The first is to focus on the improvement of production efficiency and review the technological development of "from real to virtual"; the second is to "from real to virtual". What kind of Metaverse?
"From real to virtual" technology development
1. Brief introduction of industrial software development
The technological development of "from real to virtual" represents the development history of the entire industrial software, and the core of industrial software is digital modeling and simulation. The United States began to accelerate the digital modeling and simulation strategy in 1995, to the 2005 report of President George W. Bush mentioned computational science, to the development of high-performance computing for digital modeling and simulation in 2010, and the advanced manufacturing partner in 2018 The plans are all around the modular and open platform of tools; especially in the 11 areas identified by the US President's Council on Science and Technology in 2014, they are scored based on a number of factors that affect national development, of which visualization, informatization and digital manufacturing are the top three. Domain, these are centered around digital modeling and simulation. Simulation software has also emerged from the earliest 2D simulation computer-aided design CAD and computer-aided CAE software for low-end manufacturing in the market, such as Solidworks, Autodesk, AutoCAD, etc., to the high-end market, such as Dassault's CATIA, Siemens' Solid Edge isometric 3D simulation CAD and CAE software.
2. Classification of industrial software
According to the classification of China Industrial Technology Industry Software Alliance, industrial software is mainly divided into four categories, namely:
(1) R&D and design software, subdivided into 3 sub-categories: design drawing CAD and chip design EDA, simulation testing CAE and CAM, product management PDM and PLM;
(2) Manufacturing category, subdivided into 3 subcategories: field control category DCS, SCADA and PLC, process management category MES, energy efficiency management category EMS;
(3) Operation management, which is subdivided into 4 sub-categories: ERP for enterprise resource management, SCM for supply chain management, HRM/HCM for human resource management, and CRM for marketing management;
(4) Operation and maintenance services, which are subdivided into 2 sub-categories: MRO for factory operation and maintenance, and PHM for equipment management.
3. Characteristics of industrial software development
Industrial software is the crystallization of industrial products, the crystallization of industrial knowledge (industrial manufacturing methods and processes, etc.) and know-how accumulated over a long period of time. Through years of data accumulation and technological development, the accuracy, correctness, compatibility and security of industrial software operations at the functional realization level are improving, and the recoverability, fault tolerance and maturity of models and data management are also improving rapidly. . The complexity of products and the environment are increasing, the market's requirements for industrial software computing capabilities are increasing, and people's requirements for the graphical interface of products are also increasing, from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, from static to dynamic, from historical data to real-time data. Processing, along with the development of industrial software, is restoring a complete physical world in the digital world.
"From Real to Virtual" Industrial Metaverse Development
When it comes to metaverse technology, the first thing that comes to mind is AR, VR and other extended reality-related hard technologies, followed by digital twins, CPS and other soft technologies. This chapter does not discuss technologies for the time being, and only focuses on the material civilization mentioned above. Discussion: How will the Industrial Metaverse improve production efficiency compared to existing technologies? We analyze in detail from the four stages of the industry.
1. R&D stage
Two-dimensional and three-dimensional CAD basically solve the problems in static design, and CAE and CAM realize the performance of products and production lines in the simulation dynamic environment. However, with the development of science and technology and economy, the market has put forward higher requirements for the manufacturing industry, and it is necessary to further improve industrial production efficiency and reduce production costs. These needs are mainly reflected in the following aspects:
(1) Improve the efficiency of multi-party collaboration
Vehicle design often needs to go through hundreds of links. Usually, the design of the previous link is completed and sent to the downstream before the design of a new link can be started. The whole process will be very long, and data interoperability between different design software may be encountered. question. Nvidia's Omniverse provides a basic guarantee for the interoperability of Metaverse industrial software. Through the standardized USD format file, it realizes the seamless exchange and transmission of different platforms and software data, and designers and creators can be online between different office locations. Synchronized collaboration reduces vehicle design time by 30%.
(2) Seamless link between virtual and reality in design
At present, all kinds of simulation design software design "simulation products" in "simulation virtual environment", and then use them for mass production of real products; in this process, the influence factors of simulation virtual environment on products cannot be fully quantified, and product verification performance Nor can it reach a state close to the material world. In the industrial metaverse, a simulated virtual environment is constructed through digital twins, and the Internet of Things realizes real-time communication of data between the virtual environment and the physical world, which not only improves the reliability of the simulation results, but also enables real-time iteration and optimization of the simulation system. . Designers can experience design effects immersively through VR or AR glasses, and complete the design and optimization of various ergonomics through "real" management experiments. The above changes can bring a qualitative leap to the improvement of industrial design efficiency and capability.
(3) Design iteration and optimization based on product life cycle data
Opening up supply chain data and realizing a closed-loop business model is the ultimate goal of digital reform in every industry. However, more than 20 years have passed since this goal was proposed, and most industries are still unable to achieve this goal; excluding the data privacy and interests of all relevant parties, only from a technical point of view, the supply chain chain is long, data storage is not standardized, digitalization The degree of inconsistency makes it difficult for each participant to only hold fragmented data in the supply chain, making it difficult to open up the entire chain of data and complete data-based product design and iteration. In the metaverse, each industrial product will generate a digital twin in the digital world. Along with the product's entire life cycle, the physical product data in the physical world is uploaded to the digital world twin in real time through IoT, and through these data, it can be grasped in real time. Product status, early warning for various product failures, users can also upload product experience and suggestions in real time to provide reference for product design and iteration. At present, the electric vehicle industry has begun to try this. For example, when the full life cycle management of vehicles based on digital twins is popularized in the future, the development of the industrial metaverse will be accelerated.
2. Manufacturing stage
The value of the industrial metaverse in the manufacturing stage is mainly divided into the following two aspects:
(1) Remote monitoring and inspection
Industrial Metaverse supports multi-user online collaboration and various industrial Internet cloud access, compatible with various terminal devices and AR glasses, and can be quickly applied to scenarios such as remote monitoring, operation guidance, training and education. As shown in Figure 2, employees identify the operating status and problems of the equipment through the AR device.
Figure 2: Job Inspection (Source: DataMesh official website)
(2) Manufacturing process visualization
Through the digital twin DT and the cyber-physical system CPS, real-time supervision and management of the production line can be achieved, so as to achieve reasonable planning in advance, scientific decision-making during the event, and iteration and optimization of the decision-making model after the event.
3. Industrial consumer stage
With the advent of the industrial metaverse, the market will gradually bid farewell to the era of paper and flat manuals, and in the future, there will be more digital twins with virtual and real symbiosis, high immersion, and strong IoT connectivity. In sales, customers remotely participate in product design and product selection in the virtual world through VR and AR, which improves the conversion rate of sales orders and ineffective communication. In the use of customers, through VR and AR equipment, employees can see the operation process and requirements in real time, complete related tasks according to the steps, reduce the difficulty of employee training and reduce the operation error rate in the production process. In after-sales maintenance, suppliers enter the virtual factory through AR and VR to find problems, and perform fault repairs remotely, or instruct on-site workers to complete the maintenance work according to the steps, improve maintenance efficiency and reduce maintenance costs. For example, the person in charge of BMW mentioned in the introduction of the digital twin factory that employees wear smart glasses, and the content and methods of operation will be demonstrated and reminded step by step. Employees only need to complete relevant operations according to the operation guidance screen, which saves training costs and reduces operations. error rate.
4. Internal management stage of industrial enterprises
The new crown epidemic has made people gradually accustomed to telecommuting, working from home and other methods, and employee recruitment has also crossed geographical limitations. Chinese companies can completely recruit European employees and collaborate through online office. Horizon Workrooms launched by Facebook is to use the metaverse to replace traditional conference software such as Zoom, so that people's remote office efficiency in the metaverse surpasses traditional virtual methods.
"From the virtual to the real" industrial metaverse
It is difficult to predict the industrial metaverse of "from virtual to real", and it is impossible to judge what it is based on the existing technology combined with inertial logic thinking. Most of them can only be speculated and imagined through some clues in the bit world, so the content of this part is It's just a discussion, without making any specific direction predictions. The emergence of bitcoin and ether has brought a new look to our understanding of the world of bitcoin, and then smart contracts based on ethereum have realized the programmability of value, and innovations such as DeFi and NFT have emerged, ranging from encrypted assets to various financial derivatives. , to the marketization of digital artworks and the popularity of blockchain games, which have made the economic development of creators unprecedentedly lively. These series of developments have made us feel a different power than before. This power is allowing us to break through the boundaries of physics. The imaginary constraints of the composition allow us to see more possibilities around the world of bits. Three of them are the most discussed at the moment, namely: technical capabilities, collaborative relationships and business models.
technical skills
As shown in Figure 3, the Metaverse industry chain, in which most of the technical capabilities come from the development of the "from real to virtual" process, such as 5G, WIFI6, cloud computing, AR/VR, AI, etc., CPS, digital twin and other technologies . However, some technologies come from the process of "from virtual to real", the most typical of which is blockchain, although blockchain integrates "from real to virtual" distributed computing, cryptography, privacy computing, etc., However, the concept of blockchain originates from the application of Bitcoin, which uses technology to reconstruct trust and subvert a set of financial management methods in the physical world.
Collaborative relationship
If the industrial metaverse is to achieve a higher-order material civilization through the improvement of production efficiency, then improving the synergy efficiency of the supply chain is the basic guarantee for the improvement of production efficiency. Supply chain collaboration is a very complex issue. In the 1980s, the American daily necessities manufacturer Procter & Gamble connected its information system with the system of a supermarket to share data and complete automatic order replenishment, greatly improving collaboration efficiency. It is also the first time in history to realize supply chain information sharing and collaborative management. Since then, different industries and different fields have tried to break the boundaries of enterprises, connect various information islands in the supply chain, open up the data chain and maximize the benefits of multiple parties. However, the market competition environment is complex and changeable, resources are distributed unevenly and the goals of all parties are different. Therefore, the problem of information islands has been deadlocked for a long time. The problem of multi-party cooperation and trust has seriously affected the efficiency of the supply chain. The game problem based on incomplete data has led to serious problems in the supply chain. The bullwhip effect and high inventory costs make upstream companies in the supply chain "burdened" on the road of development. Just when the industry was at a loss, the distributed self-organizing DAO proposed by the "from virtual to real" bit world provided a new idea for supply chain collaboration. "The competition in the future is not the competition between enterprises and enterprises, but the competition between supply chains and supply chains." This view has been recognized by entrepreneurs ten years ago, but in these ten years, how many Does the enterprise really consider the cooperation with upstream and downstream from the perspective of maximizing the total cost of the supply chain? It is more to use the dominant position of core enterprises in the supply chain to squeeze the interests of small and medium-sized partners in the upstream and downstream, such as the VMI model of supplier management inventory, which allows core enterprises to achieve zero inventory and achieve their own cost reduction goals, but Because the supply chain data is not transparent, suppliers still hold a large amount of inventory to shorten the lead time and meet the downstream ordering demand, so the VMI model only transfers the cost from the downstream to the upstream, but does not really reduce the total cost of the supply chain. DAO brings together companies with the same goals to jointly maintain the development and governance of the ecosystem. Through asset pledge, points and token holdings, the goals of the organization are strongly bound to the goals of the enterprise, and the ecological development will benefit all employees. Individual The value of the company's own assets will also be affected. The DAO model will redefine the way of collaboration between enterprises. Although DAO does not have a mature format at present, it will not be absent in the future development of the industrial metaverse.
business innovation
The internal explosive power of business innovation in the bit world comes from "trust", "In Blockchain, We Trust", and blockchain redefines trust with technology. When it comes to "trust", industrial enterprises spend a lot of "hidden costs" in the maintenance and management of "trust". How much is this hidden cost? No one has counted, and we can make a basic judgment through a simple "purchasing" management process. In the procurement process, many companies have strict and complex processes. Suppliers need to provide various qualification certification materials, sales status, product quality certification, production capacity certification, R&D capability certification, etc. The company will spend a long time on the authenticity of these materials. Time audit, this process takes a lot of labor and time costs, and this work is only to incorporate supplier data into the enterprise supplier certification resource database, and the procurement department needs to update the information of each enterprise in the resource database every six months or a year. Once; when there is a procurement demand, the procurement department will find out potential suppliers from the resource pool and need to conduct a new round of capability inspection. If all companies in the supply chain can put all business data on the chain and keep certificates, will the cost of business matching be greatly reduced in the future? Will the matching efficiency also be greatly improved?
In the development of the industrial metaverse, distributed digital identity DID, non-fungible token NFT, and distributed storage IPFS from the bit world will not be absent. In the Web 2.0 stage, the protection of digital intellectual property is difficult to solve, and industrial innovation will also be seriously hindered. For example, some design companies send design documents to OEM companies, although legal contracts can be used as "trust assumptions" to restrict OEM companies from sending design documents. However, after the document is sent from the designer, the subsequent process becomes a black box, and the designer has no way of knowing the whereabouts and scope of use of the document. Blockchain-based Web 3.0 provides new solutions for creators' economic development. Designers mint design works into NFTs, and use smart contracts to limit the ownership, right to use, method of use, period of use and purpose of use. Data is uploaded to the chain, which is transparent and cannot be tampered with, which fundamentally solves the problem of trust in the circulation of digital products. With the advent of the Metaverse, there will be more and more content that reflects scarcity through personalization and customization. Everyone can participate in design and creation. Products designed in the digital world are produced in the physical world, which leads to the original large-scale industrial enterprises. The assembly line production method with batches and few varieties will no longer be applicable, and more flexible production methods with small batches and multiple varieties will be required, which will be a forced reform from "from virtual to real". The industrial metaverse will subvert the traditional definition of industrial competition. Not only will the technological paradigm change faster and more frequently, but potential competitors with advanced technologies can quickly enter and replace the original monopoly dominant manufacturers.
Industrial Metaverse Technology
How far are we from the industrial metaverse? This is determined by two factors. The first aspect is the “hard” infrastructure and hardware construction at the bottom of the Metaverse. In this aspect, whether it is the Industrial Internet or the Consumer Internet, there is a certain degree of interoperability; Slightly "soft" technical capabilities and content construction.
infrastructure and hardware
As shown in Figure 3, the seventh layer of the metaverse industry chain, in this part, we mainly discuss the hardware facilities of human-computer interaction. The current leader of VR glasses is Facebook's OculusQuest 2, and the leader of AR glasses is Microsoft's Hololens. The problems existing in the overall market of AR/VR glasses are as follows: First, the price is high. For example, the sales price of Hololens is tens of thousands of yuan, and the threshold for ordinary users to enter the metaverse is relatively high; second, the screen is delayed, and the AR/VR display screen cannot match the The viewing angle of the user's line of sight is consistent, there is a delay, and the screen does not match the actual movement, resulting in dizziness; third, the AR/VR market content is lacking; fourth, the current AR/VR is mainly based on the stand-alone version, and the amount of data storage There are few and weak processor capabilities, which cannot meet the communication needs and content interaction requirements in the Metaverse.
Figure 3: Seven layers of the Metaverse industry chain
In addition to Facebook and Microsoft, Apple's AR/VR devices are highly anticipated in the market. After acquiring the Swedish facial recognition company Polar Rose in 2010 and starting the VR layout, it has never stopped hardware research and development in virtual reality for nearly ten years. Investment, including the acquisition of 3D sensing and motion capture PrimeSense, Faceshift, the acquisition of augmented reality company Metaio, etc.; according to the latest news, Apple's smart glasses have been trial-produced with TSMC and are expected to be released in 2022 and listed in 2023. The market is looking forward to Apple. It is worth looking forward to bringing users into the metaverse through smart glasses, just as the launch of the iPhone will bring the market into the mobile Internet stage. Domestic companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi are deploying smart glasses, but there is still much room for improvement in technology compared with international giants. The industry predicts that AR/VR and other smart device technologies will not enter the mature stage until 2025, so that the terminal market can truly open the door to the metaverse.
Industrial Metaverse Technology Capability and Content Construction
In terms of technical capabilities, we mainly discuss digital twin DT and cyber-physical system CPS. These two technologies are the most basic elements for realizing the content of the industrial metaverse. Among them, digital twin DT applies sensors, physical models, and operating data to convert physical world scenarios. Mirroring into the virtual world, we can see a 1:1 virtual world with the physical world through XR technologies such as AR\VR, which can reflect the whole life cycle process of physical objects. CPS mainly solves 3C problems (computing, communication and control functions), provides a scientific basis for the decision-making method and content of the digital twin, and uses perception data to calculate the control and output and send it to the actuator for physical realization; this process requires Relying on the assistance of industrial software capabilities, as mentioned above, industrial software is the crystallization of industrial products, gathering a large amount of industrial knowledge and wisdom, and the industrial software technology for high-end manufacturing is firmly grasped in European and American countries. For my country, whether it is the industrial Internet or the Industrial Metaverse Society, it is a bottleneck problem. In the past two years, the country has also vigorously encouraged domestic software replacement plans. However, the technical obstacles cannot be broken through in the short term, and the road ahead is still long. However, China is the only country that covers all industrial manufacturing categories. It has rich accumulation of industrial knowledge and data. In the future, it will be dominated by industrial enterprises (rather than IT enterprises). Through in-depth cooperation with technology companies, it is believed that breakthroughs can be made.
Summarize
Through the discussion on the development path of the industrial metaverse from "real to virtual" and "from virtual to real", the industrial metaverse can bring infinite imagination to the improvement of industrial production efficiency whether it is design, production, sales or internal operation. However, there are still many obstacles that need to be solved one by one. The first is the improvement of VR\AR glasses technology, which is the infrastructure linking the digital world; the second is the development of the industrial metaverse from my country, which needs to solve the problem of technical bottlenecks, that is, the development of domestic industrial software. Development, without the support of industrial knowledge and wisdom, the most realistic virtual world is a "mirage" for industrial development after all.