So far, the concept and path of the metaverse have not been clear yet.
Metaverse is not equivalent to games, nor is it equivalent to VR, nor is it equivalent to a virtual world.
Regarding the "metaverse", the more recognized source of thought is Vernor Vinge's novel "True Names and Real Surnames" published in 1981, in which he creatively conceived a virtual world that can be accessed through a brain-computer interface and obtain sensory experience.
When the outside world was still dizzy with the concept of the metaverse, yet another new word related to the metaverse swept the entire industry.
A few days ago, Microsoft announced that Kawasaki Heavy Industries has become a new customer of its "Industrial Metaverse" business. Kawasaki Heavy Industries plans to let shop floor workers wear Microsoft HoloLens headsets to assist in production, maintenance and supply chain management. Microsoft's industrial metaverse already has two important customers, Heinz and Boeing.
In addition to Microsoft's entry into the "Industrial Metaverse", another technology giant, Nvidia, is also targeting the "Industrial Metaverse". Based on the Omniverse platform, AI and computing technologies, Nvidia can achieve the results of building an industrial Metaverse.
It is foreseeable that the metaverse is an area that domestic and foreign Internet companies and industrial companies are trying to touch and expand.
Peek into the "Industrial Metaverse"
The Metaverse emerged in two contexts. On the one hand, it exists in the digitization of offline scenes, mainly in the fields of social and consumer Internet, such as the "Social Metaverse", "Game Metaverse", and "Sports Metaverse". ” and so on; on the other hand, the demand for digital transformation stemming from industry and industry, that is, the industrial metaverse.
The simplest understanding of the "industrial metaverse" is the application of concepts and technologies related to the metaverse in the industrial field.
Similar to the metaverse, the industrial metaverse is not a technology, but a collection of technical concepts. It is also based on the Internet and is a product of the highly developed digital information.
A definition that is often mentioned in the industry: the industrial metaverse is a new industrial ecology that is deeply integrated with new information and communication technologies represented by XR and digital twins and the real industrial economy. Through technologies such as XR, AI, loT, cloud computing, and digital twins, we will open up seamless connections between people, machines, objects, and systems, realize the combination of digital technology and real industries, and promote the efficient development of physical industries.
If the metaverse is regarded as a world where virtual reality, reality, and people, ideas, and consciousness are combined, then the industrial metaverse is a part of the metaverse. If the metaverse is regarded as a concept and a technology, then the industrial metaverse can be understood as the application of the metaverse concept and technology in industry, which is the qualitative change factor for the metaverse to empower industry and promote industrial improvement, innovation, and even revolution .
At present, my country's industry occupies an important position in the national economy. Public data shows that in 2021, my country's total industrial added value will reach 37,257.5 billion yuan, an increase of 9.6% year-on-year in 2020, accounting for 32.58% of my country's gross national product.
Therefore, in combination with national policies, combining the integration of industrialization and industrialization, intelligent manufacturing, digital transformation and metaverse, and improving the level and capabilities of these technologies will have a huge impact on industry, and will promote the rise of industrial products, industrial industry production and the application of industrial products to the next level.
The outside world generally believes that in the industrial field, the digital manufacturing system built by new technologies such as digital twins, industrial Internet, and artificial intelligence is one of the most transparent, highly reliable, and easy-to-operate implementation methods for the "Industrial Metaverse".
There are different opinions in the industry about the value brought by the Industrial Metaverse.
Some supporters believe that the industrial metaverse will subvert the current economic and social structure, and different traditional industries will be reborn in the industrial metaverse, which is a historic opportunity for China's manufacturing industry to overtake in a corner; opponents believe that, The industrial metaverse is a hype of the concept, and there is still a long way to go before the realization of the industrial metaverse. Talking about it now is purely "creation out of nothing"; some people even believe that the industrial metaverse is an industrial utopia, a fiction that does not exist at all.
It is understandable that the application of the metaverse is not only in the consumer field, but can promote the development of the industrial field.
What can the Industrial Metaverse do?
For the industrial metaverse, in the eyes of the outside world and experts, it should be analyzed and considered from the aspects of feasibility, necessity and urgency, moderate investment should be made, and tentative advancement should be made in combination with specific subdivisions and typical scenarios.
At present, the development path of industrial informatization presents five levels, which are unit application, systematic application, integrated application, network application, and wider Internet application. Correspondingly, some insiders believe that the development path of the Industrial Metaverse will also show a similar trend.
During this process, the Industrial Metaverse mainly undertakes two important tasks. On the first level, the industrial metaverse needs to strengthen the linkage between the physical world and the information world, and ensure that information serves the physical world in order to truly promote the digital transformation of industry; on the other level, three levels of information integration need to be completed, including enterprise vertical information integration, Production chain information integration.
Including, equipment information, industrial control systems, industrial software, and information about design, R&D, manufacturing, warehousing, and sales involved in manufacturing are all information that Metaverse needs to apply to industrial industries and industrial enterprises.
The scene object constructed by the Industrial Metaverse is an exact physical system, the organizational relationship and tasks in the system are clear, and the problems behind the problems to be solved are also clear.
This means that the industrial metaverse is not only to achieve information interaction in a single field and production line, but also to achieve interconnection of information in multiple fields or multiple companies in the industry, so that all information can be shared by multiple entities. served. Realize the interaction and collaboration of multiple subjects, and achieve the production goals of real-time, precision and accuracy.
For example, the Industrial Metaverse may take digital twins to a whole new level. Simulation testing in the metaverse environment allows industrial companies to test thousands of potential scenarios for their own ecosystems and choose the best strategy for their production. Through such methods and predictions, enterprises can not only understand the operation of equipment in real time, but also predict the future use results of production equipment.
And production-level simulation is just the beginning of a series of potential industrial-level applications. In a report previously published by Industry Week, IDC analyst Jan Burian provided some compelling use cases that the industrial metaverse will realize: through virtual factories Visiting and interactive assembly enhance brand awareness, use digital humans to simulate human behavior, and realize the layout, performance, and interaction simulation of machines, factories, supply chains, and even the entire ecosystem, all of which can be realized through related technologies and applications of the industrial metaverse.
It can be seen that the relevant solutions and technologies constituted by the metaverse will bring substantial convenience to industrial production in many aspects.
The trillion-dollar market is emerging, and what is lacking is not only the implementation of hardware
The only way for the "industrial metaverse" is the digital twin platform, or digital twin, which is a state presented by the development of the industrial metaverse.
Digital twin is a 1:1 mapping from the real world to the virtual world. It simulates the industrial production in the real world by controlling the production process and production equipment in the virtual world, and pays more attention to "from virtual to real".
The virtual world reflected in the industrial metaverse not only has a mapping of the real world, but also has experiences and interactions that have not yet been realized or even cannot be realized in the real world. It is a transformation from "virtual to real" to "virtual and real collaboration".
At present, the application of digital twins in pan-industry is becoming more and more popular. For example, in the port scene, driven by dynamic data in real time, in the digital twin all-element scene, it can cover the full-cycle operation simulation from cargo arrival, loading and unloading, stacking, warehousing and port departure.
In areas that are closer to our daily life, such as subways and communities, digital twin related technologies have also been applied. Previously, 51WORLD cooperated with iFLYTEK to create a smart community platform for Pingping Street Community in Guancheng District, Zhengzhou. It fully empowered security, service, environment, etc., and provided community managers with three-dimensional visualization and intuitive management methods, forming a Efficient management mode.
From the perspective of the outside world, the industrial metaverse can be regarded as the "future form" of intelligent manufacturing. Through the "Industrial Metaverse" to empower all links and scenarios of industrial manufacturing, industrial enterprises can achieve the purpose of reducing costs and improving production efficiency, and realize the further upgrading of intelligent manufacturing.
At present, many domestic enterprises are moving closer to intelligent manufacturing. As a mobile phone industry that relies heavily on fully automated production lines, it can be said to be one of the typical ones.
At present, the first phase of Xiaomi Smart Factory has been offline for production, and the second phase of the factory is expected to start production by the end of 2023. The Xiaomi smart factory is a highly intelligent "black light factory". It can realize full-automatic unmanned production inside, and only manual material supply. It is truly automated, informatized, and intelligent, with an annual output of one million units.
In addition, automobile manufacturing also requires a highly automated intelligent production line. Domestic automaker Geely Automobile has extensively used cyber physics systems in new car design, process development, and trial production verification, which has greatly shortened the development cycle of new cars; among foreign automakers, BMW is also cooperating with Nvidia on virtual factories. BMW will introduce the Nvidia Omniverse platform to coordinate the production of 31 factories, which is expected to increase BMW's production efficiency by 30%.
With the gradual maturity of metaverse-related technologies, there will be more and more subjects and content connected to the system. The application scenarios of the Industrial Metaverse will cover the entire life cycle of products from R&D and design to sales and after-sales. "Virtual-real collaboration" guides and promotes industrial process optimization and efficiency improvement, achieving the effects of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, efficient collaboration, energy conservation and emission reduction.
According to agency statistics, the overall economic value-added of my country's industrial Internet core industries will reach 652 billion yuan in 2020, and it is expected to reach 1,622.4 billion yuan in 2025. As a more advanced form of the Industrial Internet, the Industrial Metaverse can continue to develop and penetrate the Industrial Internet market.
However, the development of the industrial metaverse, similar to the metaverse applied in 2C scenarios, requires the joint support of software and hardware. In addition to hardware devices such as chips, sensors, optical lenses, and VR/AR equipment as the base, at the same time, the support of basic technologies such as powerful computing power, networks, and cloud platforms is also crucial.
For the industrial industry, cloudification is an inevitable development direction. The cloud platform will become the basis and place for industrial enterprises to link the digital world and the intersection of the virtual world. The development of more complete specifications, interfaces, and protocols is the "cloud" of the industrial industry. In order to better integrate and unify information and resources.
However, with the gradual improvement of infrastructure such as networks, cloud computing, and chips. Perhaps, after an inadvertent technological revolution, the industrial metaverse sprung up.
Article source: New Industry Insights