CES 2023: Mercedes to take factories onto the Omniverse with NVIDIA

Mercedes has unveiled plans to virtually design, plan, and optimise its factories in the Omniverse in partnership with NVIDIA, who announced the news at CES in Las Vegas this week.

Mercedes-Benz is the latest customer to sign up to NVIDIA’s Omniverse Enterprise, a software platform that uses AI and metaverse technologies to help enterprises build digital twins for industrial use cases.

The automaker is working with NVIDIA to build a dedicated platform for its electric vehicle plant in Rastatt, Germany.

Using Omniverse, the pair aim to reduce and react to supply chain issues and production issues during vehicle production, and to also plan for new layouts of production plants when vehicles undergo new designs. In which case, Omniverse will hopefully “reduce waste, decrease energy consumption, and continuously enhance quality,” said NVIDIA in a press release.

The platform will allow Mercedes’ planners to virtually access a digital twin of the factory in order to review and make changes to the plant as needed.

Improvements will be able to be evaluated and validated in the virtual world, according to NVIDIA, and then implemented in the real world as justified in Omniverse.

Additionally, Mercedes can synchronise plant locations anywhere in the world by connecting Omniverse to its own data platform.

The German car maker has already been working with NVIDIA to develop “software-defined” vehicles that can be tested and authenticated on its Omniverse platform.