Industrial Metaverse: Enabling Technologies, Open Problems, and Future Trends

2024-05-14

arXiv.org

AI Summary

The industrial metaverse lacks a clear enabling technology architecture, well-defined cross-domain migration pathways, and systematic analysis of scenario-specific adaptability. Method: This study proposes the first multidimensional technology–scenario mapping framework, systematically analyzing five core technologies—digital twins, blockchain, 6G, extended reality (XR), and artificial intelligence—and delineating their functional boundaries and migration potentials across representative industrial scenarios, including product design, production operations, and quality inspection and testing. It identifies three cross-cutting challenges—security, resource constraints, and interoperability—and develops a taxonomy-based solution atlas. Contribution/Results: The work establishes a closed-loop review framework spanning “technology–scenario–challenge–solution,” offering an authoritative reference for standardization, system integration, and frontier research in the industrial metaverse.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Search and Optimization: Metareasoning and Metaheuristics
• Intelligent Robots: Multi-Robot Systems

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• Responsible Web: Technology governance, policy, and regulations
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Mining multimedia, multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual Web data

Abstract

As an emerging technology that enables seamless integration between the physical and virtual worlds, the Metaverse has great potential to be deployed in the industrial production field with the development of extended reality (XR) and next-generation communication networks. This deployment, called the Industrial Metaverse, is used for product design, production operations, industrial quality inspection, and product testing. However, there lacks of in-depth understanding of the enabling technologies associated with the Industrial Metaverse. This encompasses both the precise industrial scenarios targeted by each technology and the potential migration of technologies developed in other domains to the industrial sector. Driven by this issue, in this article, we conduct a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art literature on the Industrial Metaverse. Specifically, we first analyze the advantages of the Metaverse for industrial production. Then, we review a collection of key enabling technologies of the Industrial Metaverse, including blockchain (BC), digital twin (DT), 6G, XR, and artificial intelligence (AI), and analyze how these technologies can support different aspects of industrial production. Subsequently, we present numerous formidable challenges encountered within the Industrial Metaverse, including confidentiality and security concerns, resource limitations, and interoperability constraints. Furthermore, we investigate the extant solutions devised to address them. Finally, we briefly outline several open issues and future research directions of the Industrial Metaverse.

Problem

• Understanding enabling technologies for Industrial Metaverse applications
• Exploring technology migration from other domains to industrial sectors
• Addressing challenges like security, resource limits, and interoperability

Innovation

• Integrates blockchain for secure industrial operations
• Uses digital twins for virtual production modeling
• Leverages 6G and XR for real-time connectivity