An Exemplary Case of Industrial Metaverse: Engineering Product Demonstration Using Extended Reality Technologies

Abstract

Metaverse is a new medium that effectively fuses digital and physical worlds into a seamless experience. Metaverse platforms are limited in their current scope of applications and require further exploration to expand their capabilities beyond social networking. In this paper, we present a system framework that aims to realize the concept of industrial Metaverse for engineering product demonstration using extended reality (XR) technologies. The framework incrementally integrates virtual and real environments throughout three phases with a focus on transitioning from business to engineering aspects. A virtual reality (VR) exhibition hall, an augmented reality (AR) catalog, and a mixed reality (MR) on-site assessment tool have been developed to support technical marketing in each phase, respectively. Test results show that these XR applications enable real-time interaction for potential customers to evaluate industrial coolers without geographic and temporal restrictions. The presented framework may work as a foundation for the implementation of industrial Metaverse in the post-pandemic era.