Siemens, Nvidia collaborate to enable Industrial Metaverse

German industrial manufacturing company Siemens, and graphics giant Nvidia have expanded their partnership by connecting Siemens Xcelerator open digital business platform, and Nvidia Omniverse platform for 3D design. The partnership will enable an industrial metaverse- an enhanced virtual reality for companies to deliver productivity and process improvements across the production and product lifecycles.

The addition of Omniverse to the open Siemens Xcelerator partner ecosystem will accelerate the use of digital twins, the company said in a statement.

"Now the companies of all sizes will be able to employ digital twins with real-time performance data; create innovative industrial IoT solutions; leverage actionable insights from analytics at the edge or in the cloud; and tackle the engineering challenges by making visually rich, immersive simulations more accessible," the statement further read.

According to Roland Busch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Siemens AG, photorealistic, physics-based digital twins embedded in the industrial metaverse offer enormous potential to transform our economies and industries by providing a virtual world where people can interact and collaborate to solve real-world problems.

“Through this partnership, we will make the industrial metaverse a reality for companies of all sizes,” added Busch.

The Siemens Xcelerator platform connects mechanical, electrical and software domains across the product and production processes and enables the convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT).

“Siemens and Nvidia share a common vision that the industrial metaverse will drive digital transformation. This is just the first step in our joint effort to make this vision real for our customers and all parts of the global manufacturing industry,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, Nvidia.

Nvidia Omniverse is an AI-enabled, physically simulated and industrial-scale virtual-world engine that enables full-fidelity live digital twins. Nvidia AI is used by more than 25,000 companies worldwide.

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Accenture and others are looking at Metaverse technology for business and other uses.

According to a Reuters report, to make the services more affordable for small and medium businesses, the services will be provided through Siemens’ software-as-a-service subscription model.

Reuters quoted Tony Hemmelgam, CEO, Siemens Digital Industries Software, as saying, “We can essentially replace having to build a thing in the real world first.”

The platform would also ascertain that the products “are going to work well, before we commit to building them in the real world when it becomes really expensive and difficult to change,” he added.