Siemens has announced a bunch of partners and products focused on the industrial ‘metaverse’ at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week (January 9-12), mostly linked to its Xcelerator software and platform. These include top-line work with Sony around augmented and virtual reality (AR / VR) for industrial usage, and with AWS to make generative AI more accessible to application developers.
Red Bull Racing was roped in at CES to show Sony’s head-mounted AR / VR display being used by Formula One engineers. The AWS tie-up on generative AI focuses on the inter-working of its own Mendix low-code platform with the US cloud firm’s developer API service AWS Bedrock. The Siemens Xcelerator platform has an expanded home energy management portfolio, on show in Las Vegas. Siemens also showed its work with Spanish agricultural tech firm Blendhub to tackle food insecurity and transform food production.
Cedrik Neike, member of the board at Siemens and chief executive at Siemens Digital Industries, said: “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.”
The German firm said of the partnership with Sony that the duo will make the Xcelerator software portfolio available with a “spatial content creation system” from the Japanese firm. In other words, various of its Industry 4.0 software will work on Sony’s latest AR / VR gear – to “kickstart content creation for the industrial metaverse”. The product will use Siemens’ NX CAD/CAM/CAE software, and be marketed by Siemens as NX Immersive Designer.
Siemens said of the AWS combo: “[We are] making it easier for businesses of all sizes and industries to build and scale generative AI applications… by integrating Amazon Bedrock, offering a choice of high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies via a single API…, with Mendix, the leading low-code platform that is part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio.”
The expanded home energy management portfolio on Xcelerator is called Inhab, and offers “full transparency and control over which sources are supplying energy at a given time and how that energy is being distributed throughout the home”, said Siemens. It flagged features as real-time alerts, 24/7 monitoring, and energy goal settings, and future integration with electric appliances and electric vehicle charging.
Siemens has also introduced a chatbot, it said, to its Xcelerator developer portal, following work with Microsoft. It called it an “innovative AI companion to enhance the development experience”.
Roland Busch, chief executive at Siemens, said: “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. 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.”
