Nvidia teams with Mercedes-Benz to design digital twins for real-life factories

21.09.2023 - 02:45 / venturebeat.com

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Mercedes-Benz said it will create digital twins for its real-life factories as part of a partnership with Nvidia to make manufacturing more efficient.

Using Nvidia’s Omniverse platform, the car maker will create virtual, metaverse-like representations of its car factories before it builds them in real life. Such “digital twins” can save on costs, enable companies to test ideas and then revise them, and collect real-life data that can inform future designs, said Jörg Burzer, member of the board of the Mercedes-Benz Group, in a press briefing.

Nvidia has been talking up the Omniverse as a kind of onramp for the metaverse for years, and it is promoting Universal Scene Description (USD) — originally created at Pixar — as an open metaverse standard for sharing 3D files across different companies and industries.

While the metaverse has stalled a bit on the consumer side (Meta is still trying to get us into virtual reality games and work environments with its VR headsets), the enterprise metaverse for engineers is thriving.

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Mercedes-Benz said it will use digital twins — with help from Omniverse and USD — for production applications to design, collaborate, plan and operate manufacturing and assembly facilities.

Mercedes-Benz’s new production techniques will bring its next-generation vehicle portfolio into its manufacturing facilities operating in Rastatt, Germany; Kecskemét, Hungary; and Beijing, China — and offer a blueprint for its more than 30 factories worldwide.

This “digital first” approach enhances efficiency, avoids defects and saves time, marking a step-change in the flexibility, resilience and intelligence of the Mercedes-Benz MO360 production system, the companies said.

The digital twin in production helps ensure Mercedes-Benz assembly lines can be retooled, configured and optimized in physically accurate simulations first. The new assembly lines in the Kecskemét plant will enable production of vehicles based on the newly launched Mercedes Modular Architecture that are developed virtually using digital twins in Omniverse.

By leveraging Omniverse, Mercedes-Benz can interact directly with its suppliers, reducing coordination processes by 50%. Using a digital twin in