Mercedes-Benz has been leveraging Nvidia technologies in multiple ways to support vehicle manufacturing and testing, but the partnership is moving deeper into the metaverse, as the companies announced at CES 2023 that the automaker will use Nvidia’s Omniverse platform and digital twin capabilities to help it design and plan manufacturing and assembly facilities.
The companies are working on setting up a “digital first” planning process for the Mercedes-Benz plant in Rastatt, Germany, where the automaker is launching a dedicated platform for manufacturing new models of electric vehicles.
Using Omniverse will allow Mercedes-Benz planners to access and work with the digital twin of the factory, reviewing and optimizing the plant as needed without disrupting daily operations that are ongoing at the plant. Every change can be quickly evaluated and validated in the virtual world, then implemented in the real world to ensure maximum efficiency and ergonomics for factory workers, Nvidia said. By leveraging Omniverse, Mercedes-Benz will be able to create feedback loops to reduce waste, decrease energy consumption and continuously enhance quality.
This blueprint created with the help of the Omniverse platform eventually will be rolled out to other parts of the global Mercedes-Benz production network to enable more agile vehicle manufacturing. Mercedes-Benz can synchronize plant locations anywhere in the world by connecting Omniverse with its in-house MO360 Data Platform.
Through the project, Mercedes-Benz also will become one of several early adopters of the latest release of Omniverse Enterprise, which also was launched at CES this week. The new version leverages Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, which supports real-time RTX ray and path tracing to boost performance over previous versions by up to three times when combined with Nvidia’s latest GPU technology. More details about the new capabilities in the latest release can be found in this blog post.
So far, CES 2023 has been an automotive adventure for Nvidia, with the company also announcing a partnership with Foxconn focused on automating aspects of electric vehicle production.