Nvidia, Siemens tout 'industrial metaverse' to predict the future Siemens and Nvidia don’t want manufacturers to imagine what the future will hold – they want to build a fancy digital twin that helps them to make predictions about whatever comes next. During a press conference this week, Siemens CEO Roland Busch painted a picture of a future in which manufacturers are besieged with …
Useless? No more useless than drafting, 3D modelling, simulation and then Product Lifecycle Management have been, and they've been very useful - hence their widespread adoption in industry.
If you can benefit from creating digital models and prototypes of a product before spending millions on tooling - you can benefit from creating digital models for entire factories and supply chains.
Yes, this Siemens spokesman was using buzzwords, but the vision is obvious enough - especially if you know that existing PLM software is not merely an evolution of draughting, and not just a simulation environment, but is a method of bringing together all product data (from the 3D model, component supplier agreements, simulation of parts, results of real-world testing and the difference, customer issues from the previous version...) and putting it to use. Cheaply simulate before expensively implementing
Obvious and self evident.
If you add to this more data collection, cheaper processing power and better simulations of physical systems, the more scenarios you can test ahead of time. The cost of simulation goes down. The scope of complex scenarios that can be simulated goes up. You might virtually stress-test your supply chain for example "What happens if factory X is flooded?"*
Now, PLM software carries the usual warning 'digital simulation is not intended to replace physical testing, merely to reduce the search space'. Fine, an engineer can make physical prototypes for real testing. A CEO typically can't do that for business strategies. Simulation, prediction, analysis is all they've got.
* Yeah, to fully analyse supply chains you'd need to interact with other companies' digital models and even then chaos would limit the scopes of predictions - just as with weather forecasting. However, the models would serve as a reminder that macro problems can arise from seemingly micro causes.
And using VR you can have real people virtually populate your virtual factory, for insights into movement, ergonomics, shift patterns. Why stop there?
Have people role-play through social policies before enacting them. I mean, any decision maker who can materially effect millions of lives should be duty bound to do everything they can to make the best decision, no?
In the event if a fire, the fire crew have a live 3D model of the factory. Not the blueprints, not just the contractor's 3d models, but the factory as is - which tanks currently contain what flammable substance, which pallets and trucks are currently obstructing the loading bays. Obviously too datas on which humans are where.
That would be good for human firefighters. Likely to be invaluable for robotic firefighters too.
Yeah, exactly like we did using computers on my engineering degree 30 years ago. OK, it was fairly limited compared to what's available now, but big manufacturers all use this stuff, day in, day out. Sounds like a repackaging and hyping effort, coming from an established engineering firm like Siemens. And they should know that "photorealistic" is less important than "concentrates on the important stuff", but I guess that's the weakness of the ideas that emerge when engineering firms combine with graphics cards manufacturers.
Well, make your mind up: either it's a logical progression of existing methodologies - but with cheaper compute, better data and integration with more mature data systems, or it's a a load of marketing fluff. Can't it just be Siemens expressing their road map?
Photorealism for many assessments is secondary to the physical properties of material parts, density, stiffness, friction, mass, wear characteristics, chemistry etc etc for sure, but a system capable of ray tracing is essential for assessing user visibility of emergency exits, glare from the sun, customer perception of a product etc. If you're an architect, it's useful to have a warning that in September your building reflects too much sunlight.
You're sniffy about graphic cards manufacturers, but what do you think physical simulations are run on? Yep, hardware from nVidia and AMD amongst others.
In any case, since they are using Pixar software, the photorealism is an effect of sophisticated physics modelling. Simulations only look like photographs because the physics modelling accounts for friction, viscosity, caustics, kinetics etc.
Thirty years ago you might have heard of Structural Dynamics Research Corporation, but their product I-DEAS was combined with Unigraphics by Siemens and now goes by NX. I belive Siemens know a thing or two about industrial control as well.
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