Exploring the Industrial Metaverse: A Roadmap for Industry Leaders and Stakeholders

The industrial metaverse, still in its infancy, presents unique challenges for industry leaders. In order to enhance industry comprehension, the World Economic Forum and the CyberHuman Lab at the University of Cambridge collaborated with prominent industry partners and organizations to elucidate the intricate workings of the industrial metaverse, encompassing its technology, use cases, and market.

The World Economic Forum report offers a comprehensive roadmap for navigating the complexities of the industrial metaverse. Assessing its current landscape, the report highlights its varying degrees of adoption across industries. Delving into the challenges faced by companies, it discusses the limitations of initial proofs-of-concept and the barriers hindering the integration of advanced use cases.

The Industrial Metaverse: Bridging Real and Virtual Worlds

The term "industrial metaverse" commonly refers to a collection of metaverse applications tailored for industrial users. As a progression from digital twinning, this metaverse goes beyond merely replicating machinery or manufacturing plants digitally. Instead, it can be described as a persistent 3D platform that spans across an organization, its value chain, and the entire product life cycle. It serves as a digital representation of the organization within its operational environment. Operating in a complementary manner, it integrates processes, materials, machines, and people, facilitating a two-way flow between the physical and virtual worlds. It is built on foundational technologies such as extended reality (XR), robotics, sensors, and actuators as part of the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain development tools, computing, and connectivity.

Industrial Metaverse: Current Landscape and Challenges

Across industries, the adoption of the industrial metaverse varies, with leading companies in automotive, aerospace, energy, and pharmaceutical sectors taking the lead. While facing different levels of advancement, they encounter similar challenges in implementation.

Many are experimenting with VR safety training and MR showrooms, yet struggle with integration and data interpretation due to infrastructure limitations and incompatible formats. While 3D content creation shows promise, the high costs remain a concern. Additionally, the rapid innovation pace leaves companies without a clear vision, strategy, or governance for the industrial metaverse concept.

Mapping the Industrial Metaverse: Dimensions and Applications

Drawing on a collective understanding of the industrial metaverse and its potential, the goal is to outline an implementation strategy. Typically used to simplify complex systems, the roadmapping technique is employed through four key dimensions:

Market drivers: Considering economic, social, environmental, political, and legal factors crucial for responsible and inclusive metaverse growth across international borders.

Underlying technologies: Comprising hardware infrastructure, software infrastructure, and interaction layers, including connectivity, computing, AI, blockchain, robotics, IoT, and XR devices.

Required resources: Encompassing financial, organizational, and human assets crucial for successful industrial metaverse integration, spanning safety, privacy, security, organizational structures, governance, culture, and workforce.