In 2021, no other topic excited everyone as much as the meta-universe. While we all had to endure another pandemic year, many people were interested and captured by the idea of a new reality. As with any new concept, it is helpful to define the metaverse universe or what it will be. A metaverse is a new age of Internet development, more profound and better, providing 3D content, organized information, and real-time synchronous communication. Much interest in the meta-universe today has to do with social experience. Still, it is also worth thinking about the potential of an industrial meta-universe, where the goal is not social interaction but modeling experiences in the virtual world before moving to the physical world.
An industrial metaverse universe could completely transform the process of designing, producing, and using all material assets on the planet, whether buildings, planes, robots, cars, etc.
One of the many companies embracing this change is Boeing, which plans to build its new aircraft in the meta consciousness. The need to market increasingly complex, streamlined, and collaborative projects and then operate and maintain them needs a new approach in design, architecture, construction industry, automotive manufacturing, transportation, and others.
A crucial part of Boeing's strategy involves developing virtual models of three-dimensional airliner twins and a production system that allows for simulated simulations. The digital twins will play a critical role in the industrial meta-universe, creating virtual, behaviorally accurate representations of physical assets.
Making better decisions during product development and use ensures better outcomes for companies and consumers. According to Boeing, the cost of bad choices is high: more than 70% of quality errors are due to design problems. As teams from different disciplines and geographic regions meet when creating complex products, moving this workflow into a virtual space will improve mutual understanding and collaboration.
Connecting modeling and actual reality
Creating data in simulation leads to development and implementation in the real world.
Boeing is exploring ways to use tablets and headsets to benchmark an aircraft's current and former technical condition, using past maintenance history data. Employees at the company have developed an algorithm for machine analysis that makes this possible. Although they took several thousand aircraft pictures to use them in the algorithm, they failed. In this situation, Boeing experts collaborated with Unity computer vision professionals to develop a digital twin of the plane and constructed more than 100,000 computer-generated images. By adding this artificial data to the actual pictures, the trained system successfully linked the historical information to the 3D AR model of the aircraft. This opened the way for improved efficiency in aircraft inspections conducted by mechanics and engineers every day.
From testing autonomous mobile robots to developing optimized point-of-sale layouts, the increasing accuracy of modeling is improving the real world.
Although the formation of the meta-universe will take several years, companies that adopt it will be transformational. Progressive enterprises are starting now, investing in critical components such as AI and machine learning, cloud and edge computing, 5G, IoT, advanced capabilities (VR and AR), and others. A reality-based industrial meta-universe will provide a tremendous opportunity for companies to better understand and improve the physical world in a more significant, more stable, and reliable way.