Siemens' industrial Metaverse: immersive engineering and AI

Siemens announced new partnerships and breakthroughs in AI and immersive engineering to enable the industrial Metaverse, and highlighted how these technologies are empowering the world’s innovators to thrive using its open digital business platform, Siemens Xcelerator.

“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. Together with our customers and partners, Siemens is proud to announce new products that will bring the industrial metaverse a step closer to all of us.”

“Siemens is making the industrial metaverse more accessible so that our customers can use it to solve their real-world problems faster, more sustainably, and with greater efficiency – and we will make it available to companies of all sizes, so that everybody can turn their big ideas into world-changing innovations,” said Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Siemens Digital Industries.

Siemens and Sony partnership to enable immersive engineering

Siemens and Sony Corporation (Sony) are partnering to introduce a new solution that 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.

Enabling designers and engineers to create and explore design concepts in a borderless immersive workspace, the new solution will kickstart content creation for the industrial Metaverse.​ Expected to be available later in 2024, Siemens’ NX Immersive Designer, an integrated solution that combines Siemens’ NX software and Sony technology, brings immersive design and collaborative product engineering capabilities to Siemens’ flagship product engineering solution.

“At Sony, we are passionate about empowering creators with cutting-edge technologies, and in the field of spatial content creation, we have thrived in innovating the way they work by utilising our proprietary motion and display technologies,” said Yoshinori Matsumoto, Executive Deputy President and Officer in Charge of Technology and Incubation, Sony Corporation. “By combining our technologies and Siemens’ expertise in engineering, we are excited to enable more immersive engineering that redefines the daily workflow of designers and engineers. The high-quality, realistic rendering and intuitive interaction will give creators tools to pursue a more immersive creative processes that fuels further innovation in the industrial metaverse.”

In addition, Siemens and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are strengthening their partnership and making it easier for businesses of all sizes and industries to build and scale generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Siemens is integrating Amazon Bedrock – a service that offers a choice of high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies via a single API, along with security, privacy, and responsible AI capabilities – with Mendix, the low-code platform that is part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio.

Through a keynote address and exhibition presence, Siemens is highlighting how its customers are using the Siemens Xcelerator open business platform to transform how we Live, Work, Play, and Make.

Live: Siemens is unveiling its smart home energy management portfolio – Inhab at CES. The suite of Intelligent Habitat solutions allows users to have full transparency and control over which sources are supplying energy at a given time and how that energy is being distributed throughout the home. Such features as real-time alerts, 24/7 monitoring and energy goal settings provide occupants with the transparency they need to make informed decisions. As more appliances go electric and we introduce EV charging and solar arrays to homes, the highly accurate monitoring and management solutions will help to lower energy consumption and utility bills while increasing safety and capacity.

Work: Siemens is showcasing its partnership with Sony to deliver the next generation industrial Metaverse by combining new innovations in immersive engineering software in the Siemens Xcelerator open-business platform with Sony’s ground-breaking mixed reality hardware. Presented in collaboration with Red Bull Racing, Siemens is demonstrating how this new solution empowers engineers to free them from traditional constraints to bring together the virtual and physical worlds by immersing them in the industrial metaverse. 

Play: The Siemens’ Experience at CES highlights how innovators are using the Siemens Xcelerator platform to transform how the world plays. Unlimited Tomorrow is doing life-changing work to design affordable, customisable, and scalable prosthetics and working alongside customers to help develop cleaner, safer transportation for everyone, everywhere. 

Make: Blendhub is using Siemens technology to tackle food insecurity and transform food production. Deploying and connecting a multi-localised network of food and personalised nutrition factories, moving them closer to ingredients supply and final consumers, Blendhub is enabling a technology-driven approach to shared value creation in the global food system.

Growing the Siemens Xcelerator ecosystem

Alongside the visitor experience at CES 2024, Siemens is presenting opportunities for customers, partners, and developers with the Siemens Xcelerator Developer Experience. With the launch of its Siemens Xcelerator Developer Portal, Siemens is taking a giant leap forward, delivering a first-of-its-kind platform consolidating all Siemens’ APIs and developer resources. This portal, part of Siemens Xcelerator, operates on principles of openness and collaboration, providing developers a unified space to explore and access Siemens and partner APIs.

In collaboration with Microsoft, the developer portal introduces a Chatbot, offering an innovative AI companion to enhance the development experience. Seamlessly integrated with API platforms like Postman, the Siemens Xcelerator Developer Portal ensures a streamlined and developer-friendly journey from discovery to deployment.