KIANEWS The metaverse will have the biggest impact on the industry
20. 01. 2023 Friday / By: Robert Denes / Industrial / Exact time: BST / Print this page
In the meantime, focusing on the consumer, the most important opportunities are provided by another version of this virtual environment: the industrial and corporate metaverse. Businesses are constantly looking for opportunities to increase their productivity, efficiency and flexibility, and digitalization has become an essential tool to achieve this. The pandemic has allowed them to accelerate their digital transformation, opening up opportunities that previously seemed impossible.
Many have embraced emerging information and communication technologies (ICT), such as artificial intelligence (AI), edge computing, and SaaS (software as a service) models. This change, driven by trends such as environmental footprint reduction and cybersecurity, combined with 5G networks, is expected to increase global GDP by $8 trillion by 2030.
While most digital sectors such as e-commerce, media and banking have adapted during the pandemic, more physical sectors such as industry, healthcare, transport and energy are only touching on what digitization can bring in terms of security, in terms of productivity and efficiency.
Fortunately, we are approaching the “great inversion” – a new ecosystem of 5G technologies combined with others such as edge cloud infrastructure, augmented intelligence/machine learning, advanced sensors and robotics, which we call 5G+, will provide all industries solutions are needed to complete their digital transformation within the next 10 years.
When the metaverse is fully realized, how will it change our lives? Does it transcend today's notions of social media? Will it transform commerce? Will it revolutionize entertainment by creating elaborate virtual worlds that we can interact with? Perhaps the metaverse will do all of this in time. But I would argue that the metaverse will have its greatest direct impact on another aspect of our lives: changing the way we work.
The metaverse has a deep and lasting influence on industry and business before it reaches its full potential in the consumer realm. This is already happening. While social media and gaming companies are taking their first steps into the metaverse, major industries from automotive to transportation to mining have already taken several laps in the metaverse.
Specifically, these industries have turned their attention to a key aspect of the metaverse: the digital twin that unites digital and physical reality. Ports have started using digital twins to keep track of every container on their docks, no matter how deep they are buried. Aerospace companies build engines and fuselages in the digital world to simulate exactly how an aircraft will fly—long before the first mechanical part is assembled. Many new factories exist in the digital world as much as in the physical world, allowing operators to visualize operations down to the smallest detail.
We are witnessing the rapid emergence of a metaverse focused solely on industry. This industrial metaverse may still be nascent, but early adoption of the digital twin is already showing results, increasing productivity and efficiency, increasing safety, and enabling new levels of flexibility for industry sectors that are hardly known for their agility. Until now, digital twins have mainly been used for monitoring and analysis, but the full potential in the industrial metaverse is much greater. As edge and cloud computing capabilities, private 5G wireless networks, and new sensor, interface, and artificial intelligence technologies are added to the mix, we are moving from a state of awareness to a state of control.
