The "14th Five-Year Plan" for the development of the digital economy issued by the State Council proposes that by 2025, the digital economy will enter a period of comprehensive expansion, with the added value of core digital economy industries accounting for 10% of GDP. Deepen the digital transformation of industry, accelerating the digital transformation of entire life cycles including R&D design, production manufacturing, operation management, and market services. Promote the integrated development of digital urban and rural areas, and build digital twin cities according to local conditions. As an integration of the digital economy, with the continuous improvement of the industrial value and technology of the digital economy, the industrial metaverse will enter a rapid development stage.
From the national to local levels, digital industries represented by digital twins, industrial Internet, and metaverse have become the focus of China's economic development during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period. While policies drive the development of key technologies, they also accelerate the integration and implementation of the metaverse in industries such as industrial manufacturing, culture and tourism, and automotive.
From a technical perspective, digital intelligent transformation and industrial integration are key areas of advancement in the "14th Five-Year Plan." Digital technologies represented by artificial intelligence, VR/AR, and digital twins will experience rapid development; from a demand perspective, policies drive enterprises to transform digitally, deepen digital applications in R&D design, production manufacturing, and other links, and encourage the development and popularization of digital platforms and tools. From a development direction perspective, comprehensively implementing digital transformation and upgrading is a strategic focus of China's current development, and the industrial metaverse is an inevitable trend in digital development.
01
The Value and Definition of Industrial Metaverse
Industrial metaverse is about applying metaverse-related technologies, including IoT technology, AI technology, interaction technology, smart network technology, supercomputing technology, blockchain technology, digital twin technology, and virtual engine technology, to the industrial field. It achieves comprehensive simulation of real-world industrial environments such as R&D design, production manufacturing, operation management, and sales services in a virtual world, covering all aspects of industrial production. By integrating the virtual world with the real world, it improves and optimizes industry, forming a new manufacturing and service system.
The most important value of industrial metaverse lies in creating a thorough, comprehensive, and systematic digital twin of modern industrial complex systems, putting the entire industry in an intuitive state of complete digitization, intelligence, and informatization, and enabling the entire industrial system to be reconstructed under a virtualized background. This reconstruction breaks down the boundaries and constraints of traditional industries, sectors, and enterprises, truly realizing industrial integration supported by technology and maximizing production efficiency.
Secondly, industrial metaverse achieves sustainable cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Through digital twin of equipment and comprehensive digitization of processes, it provides a full digital twin mirror image of the production system. Industrial metaverse can achieve production hosting, providing full-chain management of the supply chain for logistics, material distribution, etc.; for energy, electricity, etc., it provides mirror analysis and simulation trial-and-error scenarios; solving the problems of high iterative trial-and-error costs and difficult upgrades, achieving sustainable cost reduction and efficiency improvement.
02
Industrial Metaverse Industry Chain Map
The industrial metaverse industry chain can be divided into infrastructure layer, core layer, and application layer. Chinese enterprises are relatively leading in the layout of the infrastructure layer and can basically achieve self-control; the key technologies, software, and hardware in the core layer mainly rely on imports; the application layer mostly involves collaborative cooperation between local enterprises and foreign companies.
Currently, Chinese enterprises mainly rely on overseas introduction in the field of digital twin engines (such as virtual engines, visualization toolsets), with the Unity engine being the mainstream representative. Unity holds an absolute industry-leading position in engine technology, especially in game development. In 2021, among the top 1000 mobile games globally, 71% were developed using the Unity engine. At the same time, the Unity engine is also widely used in general industrial fields such as construction, automotive, and manufacturing.
At present, the application scenarios of industrial metaverse are mainly concentrated in smart cities, smart transportation, intelligent manufacturing, smart buildings, smart vehicles, smart energy, etc., usually completed jointly by Chinese enterprises and overseas enterprises.
03
Opportunities for Industrial Metaverse Industry Development
Under the wave of digital transformation guided by policies such as the "14th Five-Year Plan" and the "Vision 2035," to promote the deep integration of metaverse-related technologies with various industries, industrial metaverse has emerged to meet the demand for interaction and coexistence between the physical world and the information world, achieving interconnection and interoperability of all elements, entire industrial chains, and entire value chains in manufacturing, industry, etc., thereby continuously giving rise to new business forms, models, and industries. Relevant enterprises will enjoy the dividends of the times' development during this digital wave.
The scale of China's digital economy reached 4.55 billion yuan in 2021, accounting for 39.8% of GDP, becoming the main engine of China's economic growth. Although China's digital economy scale ranks second in the world, the digitalization level in fields such as manufacturing and industry is still not high. For example, in 2020, the penetration rate of China's digital industrial economy was only 21%, leaving vast room for growth.
Currently, China is in a transformation stage towards high-quality development, and industrial digital transformation and upgrading are important starting points. Against this backdrop, China will accelerate the deep integration of digital technologies with the real economy, bringing new development opportunities in areas such as data standards and security, digital talent cultivation, and the development of new-generation information technology.
04
Industrial Metaverse Technology Architecture
Supported by policy planning, the industrial metaverse technology architecture chain is logically divided into five major sectors: basic layer, technical layer, capability layer, terminal layer, and application layer. The core technology layer involves the integration and innovation of multiple technical groups, and the capability layer constitutes the core technical capabilities of industrial digital twins. A complete "Industrial Metaverse Platform" will empower industries such as industrial manufacturing, urban planning and management, construction engineering and construction, transportation, and energy.
The rich characteristics and wide applications of industrial metaverse determine that its implementation has high complexity, involving the integration and innovation of multiple technical groups. The industrial metaverse technology system includes digital twin technology group, smart network technology group, pan-AI technology group, new information communication technology group, and industrial manufacturing-related technology group. The integration and innovation of multiple new technologies provide support capabilities for the in-depth construction, iterative upgrading, and maintenance of industrial metaverse.
Industrial metaverse realizes more accurate mapping, closer connection, and multi-dimensional linkage between the physical space, social space, and digital space of cities in terms of time and space dimensions through the application of digital twin technology. It realizes the collaborative evolution and symbiosis of three-dimensional spaces through new-generation information technologies such as AI, IoT, cloud computing, and blockchain.
05
Technical Implementation Path of Industrial Metaverse
Industrial metaverse is the antithesis of digital twins and the metaverse, representing the mapping of the metaverse in industrial-related fields. The application of real-time IoT data in digital twin models promotes the closed-loop optimization of industrial entire business processes and continuously corrects and improves physical models through data. At the technical level, based on industrial automation, digital twins put forward higher requirements in terms of real-time performance, participation, and closed-loop nature. Therefore, it will be supported by many independent tools, platforms, infrastructure, protocols, etc. for its operation.
The essence of digital twins is the closed-loop transfer of equipment identifiable identifiers, engineering personnel's knowledge and experience, and key management decisions in the system process, ultimately helping enterprises achieve a high level of digital, intelligent transformation. With the maturity of technologies such as industrial Internet, 5G, AI, and cloud computing, the application of digital twins is gradually expanding and deepening.
From the perspective of the implementation path of industrial metaverse, the key technical path is the more accurate digital mapping of physical objects by digital twins. The realization of the structure of physical objects includes different components such as object name, appearance shape, real-time working condition, engineering mechanism, and complex mechanism. Each part can be reconstructed in virtual space through digital tools; for example, the object name can be expressed through an information model, the appearance shape can be expressed through CAD modeling, the real-time working condition can be expressed by IoT data collection, the engineering mechanism can be simulated through simulation modeling, and the complex mechanism can be deconstructed by AI.
Traditional digital applications mostly describe a certain cross-sectional feature of physical objects. Digital twins achieve a more accurate and comprehensive portrayal of physical objects based on the integration and fusion of multiple types of data and models.
06
Functional Applications of Industrial Metaverse
3D modeling is the cornerstone for constructing metaverse. In the space of the metaverse, the process of digitizing physical objects is the process of their 3D reconstruction in virtual space. Combined with digital twins, real-world physical objects can be mapped in virtual space,achieving a 1:1 3D simulation model.
Based on 3D modeling, integrating technologies such as industrial Internet platforms, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing,it can simulate the operation process of the entire factory;Based on a real production line, by performing real-scene 3D modeling and simulation on each device on the real production line, and placing the built 3D simulation model into virtual space, a complete set of virtual production lines can be constructed and data synchronized to complete the real-time linkage between the real production line and the virtual production line,and virtual objects can be controlled through smart terminals,achieving remote command issuance of physical devices in the way of virtual-real device linkage.
At the same time, the real-time linked physical objects and their digital twins,can efficiently help managers conduct real-time monitoring and operation management of production lines and equipment.With the help of virtual interaction technology and terminal devices such as VR/AR, users can enter the built virtual scene,visit the digital factory,and interact with the virtual world.
07
Application Scenarios of Industrial Metaverse
Industrial metaverse in China continues to penetrate application scenarios in multiple industries. Currently, it has been applied to varying degrees in industries such as smart cities, transportation, automotive, construction, manufacturing, and energy:
(1) In the field of manufacturing, industrial metaverse focuses on scenarios such as product digital design, process flow control, and major equipment management, empowering the entire production process with digitization, intelligence, visualization, and automation;
(2) In the field of urban management, industrial metaverse empowers the entire life cycle of urban planning, construction, governance, optimization, etc., achieving digitalization of all elements, visualization of all states, and intelligent management decisions in cities;
(3) In the fields of transportation and automotive, industrial metaverse is applied to sub-scenarios such as functional design and R&D of transportation vehicles, simulation testing, autonomous driving, fault diagnosis, and equipment maintenance, helping significantly improve the intelligent level of urban transportation and greatly enhance the travel experience of citizens;
(4) In the field of construction, industrial metaverse empowers links such as architectural planning and design, implementation, operation and maintenance, achieving modernization of the building industry with high efficiency, collaboration, low carbon, and safety;
(5) In the field of energy, the application of industrial metaverse covers scenarios such as energy production, storage and transportation, management, and consumption, empowering the digitalization, real-time, intelligence, and visualization of all elements of the energy system.
08
Unity and Tencent Cloud RayData in Industrial Metaverse Application Practice
Currently, China has entered a stage of accelerating the construction of Digital China. Innovations in technologies such as 3D graphic generation, dynamic environment modeling, and rapid rendering processing have blurred the clear boundaries between online and offline, virtual reality, giving rise to a large number of digital twin application scenarios.
In this era background, Tencent Cloud RayData joins hands with Unity to bring richer means of production, efficient and standardized work processes, and highly productive product tools. Together with millions of developers, they are accelerating the construction of Digital China and releasing more digital productivity.
Tencent Cloud plays a role in promoting the integration of the real and digital world in the full real interconnection technology system such as digital twins, 3D engines, real-time rendering, and edge computing, as well as providing secure and reliable cloud services. Tencent Cloud's RayData is a pioneer in the field of big data visualization, with rich experience in the big data visualization industry. Unity has deep accumulations in the fields of 3D content creation and operation. Tencent Cloud and Unity have sufficient cooperation space. The two sides signed a strategic cooperation agreement on September 30, 2022, to jointly create the best industry practice.
Unity and Tencent Cloud RayData conduct in-depth cooperation in dimensions such as products and technologies, platforms and ecosystems
Products and Solutions:Giving full play to each other's respective advantages, integrating industry modules such as GIS and BI, jointly creating industry-level client and SaaS-level products, and creating standardized product solutions for the era of industrial metaverse.
Platform:The two sides combine the digital production materials accumulated by RayData and the broad product platform of Unity, as well as more digital enterprises and teams, to build an industry-wide asset middle platform, continuously providing content and function iteration services and technical support, achieving full industry coverage, and meeting the industry's demand for agile production.
Industry Standards:The two sides promote the construction of digital twin standard work processes through unified product exports.
Technology:The powerful data visualization technology of Tencent Cloud RayData and the 3D engine technology of Unity are integrated to empower industrial developers to release digital productivity. In addition, the two sides are committed to establishing a technical route to efficiently reuse project results, thereby improving project quality control and reducing labor efficiency costs.
Ecology:Through the creation of products and solutions, platform development, and technology integration, the ecological circles of both sides can be integrated and further expanded, covering more users, enterprises, and developers, and building a more comprehensive and diversified ecosystem.
