Industrial Metaverse Webinar

Industrial Metaverse
An IEEE Metaverse Webinar
12 July 2023 at 11:00am ET

During this virtual webinar, Roberto Saracco, IEEE Senior Member, highlights and shares his ideas on the expected evolution of the Metaverse. These ideas stem from the work being done in the FDC Metaverse Initiative that foresees the Metaverse as the future space to live in; comprising both the digital and the physical world.

The focus of this webinar is on the industrial metaverse for two main reasons:

It is possibly the one less known, yet it is the one generating more revenues today, 17B$ versus the 5B$ generated by the consumer metaverse, and expected to grow over 100B$ by 2030, versus 50B$ foreseen for the consumer metaverse.
It is expected to adopt the most advanced technologies as being expensive may not be affordable in the consumer metaverse. As technology evolves the cost of technologies decreases, hence what we see today in the industrial metaverse will be seen tomorrow in the consumer metaverse.

To explore these concepts and capabilities in more depth, access Roberto Saracco's free ebook, Exploring Ideas to Foster the Metaverse (PDF, 3 MB).

Featured Speaker:

Roberto Saracco is a senior member of IEEE where he leads the New Initiatives Committee and volunteers as a committee member of the IEEE Metaverse Initiative. Roberto fell in love with technology and its implications long time ago. His background is in math and computer science. Until April 2017 he led the EIT Digital Italian Node and then was head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital up to September 2018. Previously, up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics and society.

At the turn of the century, Roberto led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a member of the IEEE in 2050 Ad Hoc Committee. He teaches a Master course on Technology Forecasting and Market impact at the University of Trento. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 14 books.

Event Q&A:

1. Please comment two examples of Open AI and Metaverse common applications

Open AI provides tools (including the now famous ChatGTP) that can be used to populate a Metaverse. The Metaverse is a space consisting of a digital part (addressable by the Open AI tools) and a physical one. Part of the digital part is in synch with the physical part (synchronicity has to be taken with a grain of salt. It has to be synchronous for the purposes required, for example a synchronicity between a robot on the assembly line and its digital twin in the digital space may need to have very low delay, …).

Both Open AI and the Metaverse can be used to support customer care, or to generate entertainment. However, the former is a tool, the latter is a space, hence comparison may not be significant.

2. Would you elaborate on evolution: Simulator -> Digital Twin -> Metaverse? Any similarities and differences?

Simulation is a technique (using several technologies) that aims at replicating the possible behaviour of a physical entity (notice that in more general terms we can simulate also processes, behaviours of crowds, …. as well as simulating something that does not yet exist).

A digital twin is a mirror image of an entity (also here the word entity may signify a physical one, a process, …. and an entity that has yet to exist). A digital twin can be used to simulate an entity since it mirrors its characteristics (and can be used to simulate only with reference to those characteristics. I can have a digital twin of a car that does not include the characteristics of the car painting. In this case I cannot simulate the effect of wear on the painting caused by pollution …).

A Metaverse is a space containing several entities, part in a digital form and part in the physical form. It can be used to simulate the impact of something happening both in the digital and physical space. In theory, it can provide a more accurate simulation since it can extend it to many entities. At the same time a simulation should remain a simulation, so it should not affect -at least permanently- the entities. Also, it should be noted that a simulation in the metaverse should run in a specific frame, i.e. it shall not affect the Metaverse as such, that can continue to live independently of the simulation being run and of its result.

3. How to expect improving education in the future by metaverse "schools or universities”?

The Metaverse, in the long term, can be considered as the space where we will all live. As such it will be also a place to learn (and to teach). In the short term we can already see some instances of Industrial Metaverse where education is an important service leveraging on the presence of a digital space and digital twins, both of physical entities and of people.

The Industrial Metaverse is often designed with the goal to support cooperation among people/groups scattered in many places. This cooperation can be mediated by services, like real time language translation, making the cooperation more effective. The possibility to include training services for workers -and in the future of end users- is another example of education provided by in the metaverse.

Universities and school of all degrees can also exploit the flexibility provided by a metaverse to make education more effective. The availability of consumer grade AR/VR tools will stimulate the adoption of metaverse in the education domain.

4. The evolution of metaverse will have a wide effect on other domains. In particular, energy, education and possibly mental health. Would appreciate your thoughts on this?

If, and when, the Metaverse will become the place where we live, it will obviously impact the way we interact with one another and with the world, in an even more profound way than the impact we had with the cell phone. We are moving towards a responsive ambient where we will have the potential to interact with anything, courtesy of the metaverse and the various technologies supporting it (most crucial: IoT, AI, Digital Twin, pervasive communications, AR).

There won’t be basically anything that will exist in a physical form only. Every object will be wrapped in a digital foil and we will perceive it as the interacting sum of the two spaces. Clearly this will impact all path of life and all market segments.

The impacts will be different. As an example we will become aware of our action effects, like keeping the air conditioning without closing the blinders. The evidence on how much energy could be saved by changing our behaviour could have a dramatic impact on overall sustainability. Having the chance to learn from the physical world seamlessly as we interact with our ambient will improve our education continuously. Tourisms will clearly change profoundly as we will have the possibility to live seamlessly in both the physical and the digital space. Metaverse interaction services will support one-on-one communication where language will no longer be a barrier.

As with anything fundamentally new, there will be a need for adaptation and that might on the one hand increase mental stress, on the other the simplification coming through personal adaptation of the context may help some to decrease the stress level.

5. Many think the Metaverse is a speculation. The digital twins enabling the Metaverse have been around for years. Is just the interoperability for industrial Metaverse?

There is no doubt that there is a lot of hype around the Metaverse, particularly the consumer metaverse. At the same time, particularly in the case of the Industrial Metaverse we see both concrete examples delivering benefits and a work in progress towards an ever more seamless experience of the convergence of the digital and physical space.

Digital twins have been around for a while and are a fundamental component in several industries. They are the natural inhabitants of an industrial metaverse and are also seen as the starting point to create an industrial metaverse. In this sense the metaverse can be seen as a natural evolution of the digital transformation where digital twins have been created and are used. To support the metaverse these digital twins have to become embodied in a representation allowing (human) metaverse users to see and interact with them.

6. Do we have to mimic the "physical" world in metaverse? Rather wouldn't it be easier to create an "Esperanto" simpler than the reality and not bounded by the laws of physics?

If we accept the idea that the Metaverse is the place where we live and where also business is created and operates, then the need to mimic in the digital space the physical space is obvious.

However, a digital space is different from the physical one (if they were exactly the same why would you want to have it?). It is this difference that makes it worthwhile and that we can exploit. As an example, all transaction cost in a digital space is way way lower than in a physical space, in a digital space we can perform what if activities without altering the actual status (we basically create a parallel digital world where the going back is always an option). Additionally, we can be sure that any (controlled) damage occurring in the digital space can be reversed with no lasting consequences (notice the word “controlled”: malicious use of the digital space can damage both the digital and the physical space, this is why it is so crucial to ensure cybersecurity!).

In some case, as in artistic creation, we may choose to bend physical rules and that is not just fine, it is what makes the metaverse so attractive. On the other hand, like when you are using the metaverse to support remote and personalised healthcare services, you want to make sure that what is being done is coherent with the physical reality.

7. Could you please comment or elaborate further the use of Digital Twins as tutors and teachers?

There are (at least) two ways of using digital twin as tutor/teacher.

In an Industrial Metaverse we have many physical entities (robots, components, processes) mirrored by a digital twin. It is possible (it is already being done) to create a frame where a person can interact with a digital twin, as an example of a robot, and through these interactions learn how to operate the robot. The results of the interactions are seen in the “frame" and they have no effect on the physical robots that can continue to operate as its digital twin (instance) is taking care of teaching to the person. Mevea, to mention one, is doing exactly this. It creates a digital twin of one of its products (even a product-to-be) and let the customer verify the specs on the digital twin and later once the order has been finalised the customer will be using the digital twin to practice. Obviously this can be applied in a variety of situation, from surgery to cooperative working.

The person can have her own (personal) digital twin -PDT. The learning can be mediated by this PDT that will adapt the interactions to the actual knowledge of the person and to her experience. Over time the same interaction will provide different feedback as the person becomes more experienced. Think about learning to play piano. Now you have several tutorials on YouTube graded for the average player (beginner, medium, advanced, …). Tomorrow the tutorial may be crafted for a professional piano player but accessing it with the mediation of you PDT will result in an adaptation fitting your current skill. Over time, as you get better, you will be faced with an ever more sophisticated tutorial, to keep challenging your skills and keep teaching you.

This concept of PTD can also be applied in an industrial metaverse within the concept of frames. The designer will be working in a specific frame, the blue-collar in a different one (he has to interact with the physical robot… whilst the designer operated at a conceptual level). Eventually, a frame can be created for the end customer, letting him to become acquainted with the product and to learn how to use it.

The whole area of Cognitive Digital Twins is a research space (although companies like IBM have started to apply this concept in orchestrating factory robots) and promises to have a profound impact on Human Resource Management and on each one of us. The knowledge will be ever more distributed (among people, organisations and machines) and cognitive digital twins could provide the tool to transform the knowledge out there into the executable knowledge I need here and now.