Towards industry 5.0 through metaverse

Abstract

The digital transformation of the industry allows the optimization of resources through enabling technology that virtualizes the behavior of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) along the entire value chain. However, these virtual environments characterized by machine-to-machine interactions lacked the presence of humans who are at the center of the next defined industrial revolution, Industry 5.0. The goal is for humans to be actively integrated into these virtual environments called metaverses where interactions with environmental digital assets are possible. To achieve this human-centered industrial metaverse perspective, it is necessary to provide humans with technologies that allow them to reach a more immersive and realistic conception of the production processes. For this purpose, we present in this paper, a framework based on hyperconnectivity where several enabling technologies (e.g., Digital Twins, Virtual Reality, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)) are integrated in order to converge towards the industrial human-centered metaverse. To validate our framework, a demonstrator has been developed enabling the evaluation of the behavior of humans in virtual environments when facing collaborative tasks that require human-to-human interaction. Within the evaluation of this demonstrator, an experiment based on an assembly that requires interaction with an autonomous vehicle has been carried out both in reality and in the virtual world. The results obtained indicate that the avatars’ metaverse performance is closer to reality when individuals have previous experience with VR goggles, even proving, in this case, the effectiveness of metaverse for industrial operators’ training. In addition, the performance of the application has been evaluated with technical parameters and the perception of the users has been analyzed by conducting a survey receiving very positive feedback and results. Therefore, the industrial metaverse, blending cutting-edge tech with a human-centric approach for Industry 5.0, is now a reality.