Siemens doubles down on industrial metaverse

Siemens has announced partnerships and products to open up the industrial metaverse to real world applications for businesses.

Making the announcement at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show, where the metaverse has emerged as a top topic, Siemens introduced partnerships with Sony, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft that are expected to lay the foundation for the industrial metaverse with the immersive reality it brings for industrial and other users.

The partnership with Sony combines the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of industry software with Sony’s new spatial content creation system, featuring the XR head-mounted display with high-quality 4K OLED microdisplays and controllers for intuitive interaction with 3D objects.

Expected to be available later in 2024, the Siemens’ NX™ Immersive Designer integrating Siemens’ NX software and the Sony technology is aimed to enable designers and engineers to create and explore design concepts in a borderless immersive workspace.

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The partnership with Amazon Web Services is focussed on enabling businesses to build and scale generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Siemens is integrating Amazon Bedrock – a service that offers a choice of foundation models from leading AI companies via a single API – with the Mendix low-code platform that is part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio.

“We envision the industrial metaverse as a virtual world that is nearly indistinguishable from reality, enabling people – along with AI – to collaborate in real time to address real-world challenges,” stated Siemens CEO Roland Busch.

“This will empower customers to accelerate innovation, enhance sustainability and adopt new technologies faster and at scale, leading to a profound transformation of entire industries and our everyday lives.”

Siemens describes the industrial metaverse as the concept of the digital world to mirror and simulate, ranging in complexity from individual components up to major systems such as cities and power grids.

At its heart are AI and digital twins and by seamlessly integrating these with technologies such as cloud and edge computing, the industrial metaverse can optimise processes and drive sustainable practices, ultimately shaping the future beyond simulation, the company states.

To drive its vision and grow the Xcelerator ecosystem, Siemens also launched an Xcelerator developer portal to enable developers to explore and access all of Siemens’ and partner APIs.

In collaboration with Microsoft, the developer portal also introduces a chatbot as an AI ‘companion’ intended to enhance the development experience.