In the earliest part of this decade, and even stretching back to the latter portions of last decade, the biggest buzzword in the tech industry was “metaverse.” The grand idea of people spending a majority of their time in 3D spaces enthralled some of the largest companies on Earth – including the newly named Meta – but momentum never really matched expectations and to this point there’s been little to no indication that the consumer space has much interest in this reality. As a result, the industry has largely moved on (at least publicly), with focus shifting to other technologies like generative artificial intelligence – which may have a similar trajectory in consumer markets, though that’s a conversation for another day.
Even though the metaverse has largely fallen out of the general public’s consciousness, however, it doesn’t mean the idea is dead. Yes, it’s still far-fetched to envision a world where swaths of people are using wearables for mixed reality on a regular basis with today's hardware, but the industrial metaverse is absolutely building. It’s arguable that the term “industrial metaverse” is a bit of a misnomer, but whether you want to use that term or refer to it as a series of digital twins, Industry 4.0, or anything else, technology is catching up with expectations and we’ve seen continued momentum in this area even as the consumer side has fallen off.
With that in mind, below you can find six recent stories from Geo Week News highlighting the movement in this space.
The Industrial Metaverse Takes Center Stage at CES
Building a truly usable digital twin, and ultimately powering an industrial metaverse, is going to take a lot of tools and technologies to reach its full potential, but there are a few companies that are clearly at the center of much of this work. As will become clear throughout this rundown of recent Geo Week News stories, Siemens is at the center of that with their Xcelerator platform. This article looks specifically at their CEO, Dr. Ronal Busch, who gave a keynote address at this year’s CES conference that heavily featured the development of this industrial metaverse idea.
Grabbing a Front Row Seat to Tomorrow
Here, we have more of a first-person look at innovation in our industries more broadly, but with the industrial metaverse taking a prominent place in that discussion. In this blog post, I take an outsider’s view of the newest developments that can often be overlooked by those heavily involved in the space, specifically highlighting announcements made around NVIDIA’s Omniverse at their 2023 GTC conference.
NavVis, Siemens Smart Infrastructure Announce New Collaboration
Once again Siemens is taking a central place in this conversation around the industrial metaverse, this time via a collaboration announced late last year with NavVis. For these industrial workflows, it’s crucial that there is spatial accuracy in models to ensure maximum ROI, and this is an area in which NavVis specializes as their mobile scanning wearables have become a mainstay for facility managers looking to create accurate and up-to-date models of their spaces.
Hexagon Introduces HxGN Smart Sites for Managing Large Facilities
Speaking of companies who provide the tools to create accurate 3D models of large spaces, last year Hexagon announced their foray into the facility management space with the release of their HxGN Smart Sites offering. The platform is described by the company as a “real-time data visualization and location intelligence solution for complex site operations.”
Siemens and NVIDIA Talk about the Industrial Metaverse
The two companies who are at the top of the industrial metaverse market today are almost inarguably Siemens and NVIDIA with their Xcelerator and Omniverse platforms, respectively. Because of that, it’s impossible to ignore when the two companies come together to talk about innovation in this space. There are plenty of examples just from this year to choose from as they seem to be accelerating their development in this area, and this particular article recaps a talk they gave at Hannover Messe in Germany held in April of this year.
Mercedes-Benz Cars Operations Partners with NavVis
The articles from above have really looked at this development of the industrial metaverse at a higher level, either from our own perspective or that of companies involved in the space whether in talks or product releases. So, it makes sense to end this with a look at how a company is actually implementing some of these principles. To that end, we have here an article highlighting a partnership between NavVis and Mercedes-Benz to digitize their factory workflows.
