INDUSTRIAL
Game tech, AR and VR for industrial electronic digital twins – a new frontier of innovation
By Brad Hart, Chief Technology Officer, Perforce T
he concepts of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have existed for a few years. However, it is only recently that their potential advantages in industrial electronics have begun to accelerate due to the development of more immersive digital twins created using tools from the game development market, such as Unreal or Unity. Consequently, early adopters are benefiting from faster development and testing processes, enhanced training and team collaboration, and immersive user experiences.
Unreal and Unity are two of the most popular game engines developers use to create a game’s software. They are notable for enabling extremely high-quality real- time image rendering, which these days is an integral part of excellent gameplay. In electronic environments, a game engine can take CAD files and then build a digital twin that has physics-accurate and functionally-accurate simulations, complete with real-time image rendering. Furthermore, with the addition of VR headsets, the user experience can become more powerful and realistic than just viewing a digital twin on a screen.
For example, one car manufacturer has produced a digital twin of a vehicle featuring every single component from the original CAD design. Wearing a VR headset, a service engineer can be trained to understand how all those components interact, even take out nuts and bolts and replace them. Similarly, vehicle development teams in different locations can digitally collaborate and experiment in a virtual yet highly realistic environment with real-world accuracy. Industrial use cases include planning the layout of a factory more effectively, trying out different workflows, or having an operator wear a VR headset to look for any production issues. Teams in a manufacturing plant can be trained on new processes and products in a safe way, wearing VR headsets to learn in a realistic simulation without setting foot on the factory floor.
Challenges While the potential benefits are massive,
the reality is most teams are at a relatively early stage of exploration because the combination of AR, VR, game engines and digital twins presents some challenges. Teams are focusing on what workflows might look like, where data sets reside, and the need to integrate all the sources, processes and tools. Acquiring relevant knowledge is another consideration because this is new territory for most teams.
Furthermore, the size of the data files involved will be on a scale most organisations will not have experienced before, even a petabyte of data or beyond, potentially residing in multiple locations. This is due to the accuracy of image rendering and the sheer scale of information required. At the same time, even when working for large organisations, the teams typically involved in these projects are small, with as few as five people responsible for creating vast digital twins and VR applications. To deal with the amount of data involved, teams have again looked to the tools used by game developers, such as version control systems. These can create a single source of truth, providing a centralised view of a project, with visibility of all the elements, contributors, and who is doing what, how, and where. Teams can work on the same
36 MARCH 2024 | ELECTRONICS FOR ENGINEERS
file set without worrying about duplication or overwriting someone else’s actions. Version control systems can also be used to roll back to a previous version of the project. Depending on the tool, version control systems can support multiple file types and scale to match even the most demanding real-time rendering application. In terms of gaining the knowledge required, teams are outsourcing projects to game development professionals, collaborating or hiring them, helping to overcome the immediate need for electronic engineers to have sufficient expertise. That said, this is an exciting new area for those engineers and could present a career development opportunity. The good news is that a range of education is available, often free, from organisations including Unreal, Unity, and Perforce.
While it is early days, there is clear potential of AR/VR enabled digital twins using game technology in industrial applications, supporting faster and more efficient development processes, improved safety, better team collaboration and training, even career progression. Now is a perfect time to start learning more about this emerging, but fast-growing, area of innovation.
www.perforce.com
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