Towards Smart Manufacturing Metaverse via Digital Twinning in Extended Reality

TL;DR

This paper presents a forward-looking framework for smart manufacturing metaverse (MfgVerse) that fuses extended reality, digital twins, and AI to create a human-centered, on-demand production ecosystem powered by MaaS. It details three enabling strands—HMI, cyber-physical twinning, and sensor integration—alongside cognitive digital twins (CDT) that embed agentic AI into digital representations of physical actors, processes, and systems. A VR-based learning factory demonstrates how immersive environments can train and upskill the workforce, while Generative AI and multimodal sensing extend capabilities for design, optimization, and safe operation within the metaverse. The authors discuss future directions, including workforce readiness, cybersecurity, interoperability, and the need for scalable, privacy-preserving infrastructure, arguing that partially mature TRLs in some domains will require concerted pilot deployments and policy support to realize broad industrial impact. Overall, the work outlines a coherent vision and actionable research agenda to advance MfgVerse technologies for remote collaboration, sustainable production, and new MaaS-enabled business models.

Abstract

The rapid evolution of modern manufacturing systems is driven by the integration of emerging metaverse technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital twin (DT) with different forms of extended reality (XR) like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR). These advances confront manufacturing workers with complex and evolving environments that demand digital literacy for problem solving in the future workplace. However, manufacturing industry faces a critical shortage of skilled workforce with digital literacy in the world. Further, global pandemic has significantly changed how people work and collaborate digitally and remotely. There is an urgent need to rethink digital platformization and leverage emerging technologies to propel industrial evolution toward human-centered manufacturing metaverse (MfgVerse). This paper presents a forward-looking perspective on the development of smart MfgVerse, highlighting current efforts in learning factory, cognitive digital twinning, and the new sharing economy of manufacturing-as-a-service (MaaS). MfgVerse is converging into multiplex networks, including a social network of human stakeholders, an interconnected network of manufacturing things or agents (e.g., machines, robots, facilities, material handling systems), a network of digital twins of physical things, as well as auxiliary networks of sales, supply chain, logistics, and remanufacturing systems. We also showcase the design and development of a learning factory for workforce training in extended reality. Finally, future directions, challenges, and opportunities are discussed for human-centered manufacturing metaverse. We hope this work helps stimulate more comprehensive studies and in-depth research efforts to advance MfgVerse technologies.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: Illustrations of (a) the interconnected manufacturing metaverse and (b) multiplex relationships among human network, extended reality and physical reality.
• Figure 2: Illustration of cyber-physical twinning and interaction embodied by three core components -- physical twin in the real world, DT in virtual space, and interactions between physical and digital twins.
• Figure 3: Example snapshots of the virtual factory: (a) the factory hub, and (b) the tutorial room.
• Figure 4: Example snapshots from four rooms in the virtual factory that represent the manufacturing paradigms: (a) craft production, (b) mass production, (c) mass customization, and (d) personalized production. See the AR demo of users assembling cars while overlaying digital contents on top of the real world in this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/EApLtKmnf2U.
• Figure 5: Example snapshots from the mass customization factory: (a) a bird-eye view of the factory, and (b) a view from the automated assembly room showing robots assembling car components (also see the VR demo of assembly operations in this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/i5nVBOFaeWw).