Mercedes to use Nvidia’s digital twin tech to modernize its factories - TechCrunch

Mercedes Benz is joining the metaverse. Or astatine slightest its assembly facilities are.

The automaker is 1 of Nvidia’s latest customers to usage Omniverse Enterprise, a bundle level utilized to  physique and run metaverse applications. Nvidia said Tuesday up of the authoritative kickoff of CES 2023 that Mercedes volition usage Omniverse to design, program and optimize its factories. Specifically, Mercedes is preparing to manufacture its caller electrical conveyance level astatine its works successful Rastatt, Germany.

Using Omniverse, the automaker is capable to physique a integer duplicate of the mill and simulate caller accumulation processes without disrupting existing conveyance production. Nvidia says having a virtual workflow volition fto Mercedes rapidly respond to proviso concatenation disruptions and reconfigure the assembly enactment arsenic needed.

Danny Shapiro, Nvidia’s VP of automotive, told TechCrunch Mercedes has already been moving with Nvidia to trial retired autonomous conveyance exertion successful simulation.

“Now what they’re talking astir is utilizing our Omniverse technology, bringing that down to the accumulation level, and creating a integer duplicate of the full factory,” said Shapiro. “So modelling each the vehicles going done the assembly, each the robots, each the mill workers, and being capable to plan and program the accumulation and the assembly works earlier it is really live. And truthful this is helping them streamline, moving implicit from an existing A people accumulation into a caller procreation vehicle.”

A implicit mill simulation could assistance automakers measure imaginable bottlenecks, make much ergonomic moving conditions oregon find wherever a robot mightiness neglect to implicit a task earlier the installation really starts production. Shapiro said Mercedes plans to standard this strategy to its factories globally successful the future.

Mercedes apt won’t beryllium the lone automaker doing so. As we recently predicted, automakers successful the coming years volition trust connected integer twins for everything from designing conveyance interiors to making factories much businesslike to clang investigating cars.

Shapiro noted that automakers tin usage Drive SIM, Nvidia’s simulation platform, to collaborate connected conveyance plan successful virtual reality. In the future, helium expects automakers to usage simulation to make retail experiences and connection virtual walkthroughs of cars from a customer’s home.

“We deliberation astir this full lifecycle of a integer twin, from plan to engineering to manufacturing to retail,” said Shapiro, nodding towards a imaginable announcement successful the automotive retail realm successful the coming months.