Manufacturing metaverse

Excerpt

The term metaverse is attributed to the science fiction book (Stephenson, 1992) published in 1992, just a year after the Internet was established. However, similar concepts under different names date back to 1980s. The term ‘metaverse’ combines two words ‘meta’ (implying beyond) and ‘verse’ (implying universe) and is defined in the literature as a universe beyond the physical world. Metaverse includes avatars (e.g., human, animals), portals (e.g., sensors, augmented reality), and the virtual world (parallel universe). It has not been embraced by the manufacturing research community for decades. One of the first mention of the metaverse in a virtual reality setting was presented in Huvila (2013). Attributed by some to the rebranding of Facebook as Meta in 2021 and announcement of Mesh by Microsoft, the interest in metaverse has spiked across different domains, including manufacturing. Thus far, the greatest beneficiary of metaverse appears to be the gaming industry. The 3D immersive experience enhanced with the interaction and collaboration features make metaverse attractive to manufacturing. The concepts originated in data such as digitization, digital twin, and cyber-physical systems as well as technologies ranging from virtual reality and blockchain to Web3 and artificial intelligence connect manufacturing to the metaverse. Metaverse is a technology to support the well-established frameworks and initiatives such as Industry 4.0 and 5.0, as well as Society 5.0, marked by a path from digital to universal manufacturing (Kusiak, 2022). …