Editor’s note: This post is part of Into the Omniverse, a series focused on how artists, developers and enterprises can transform their workflows using the latest advances in OpenUSD and NVIDIA Omniverse.
Universal Scene Description, aka OpenUSD, is elevating the manufacturing game. Siemens, a leader in industrial technology, has embraced OpenUSD as a cornerstone of its digital transformation journey, using it to help bridge the gap between physical and virtual worlds.
Siemens is adding support for OpenUSD in its Siemens Xcelerator platform applications, starting with Teamcenter X software.
The integration empowers manufacturers to create photorealistic, robust digital twins that mirror real-world counterparts with unprecedented fidelity and efficiency. This allows for optimized resource utilization, minimized waste and enhanced product quality through comprehensive simulation and analysis — all of which align with sustainability and quality objectives.
For a company such as Siemens — one whose software touches all parts of the manufacturing cycle — digitalization can mean helping customers save time and costs, streamline workflows and reduce risk of manufacturing defects.
Ian Fisher, a member of Siemens Digital Industries Software team, is no stranger to the impact of embracing digital transformation — especially one powered by OpenUSD and generative AI.
“We are an industrial company where data is king,” he said. “OpenUSD comes in from the media side of the world, and we are looking to bring its openness and flexibility into the industrial world.”
Enterprises of all sizes depend on Siemens’ Teamcenter software, part of the Siemens Xcelerator platform, to develop and deliver products at scale. By connecting NVIDIA Omniverse — a platform of APIs and services based on OpenUSD — with Teamcenter X, Siemens’ cloud-based product lifecycle management software, engineering teams can make their physics-based digital twins more photorealistic and immersive, improving accuracy and minimizing waste and errors within workflows.
Siemens’ adoption of OpenUSD means that companies like HD Hyundai, a leader in sustainable ship manufacturing, can consolidate and visualize complex engineering projects directly within Teamcenter X. Find out more in the demo:
OpenUSD is touching other parts of Siemens as well. Siemens produces inverters, drive controllers and motors for more than 30,000 customers worldwide. Its lead electronics plant, GWE, in Erlangen, Germany, has been developing use cases from AI-enabled computer vision for defect detection to training pick-and-place robots.
One of their main challenges has been acquiring data to train the AI models that fuel these use cases. By building custom synthetic data generation pipelines using Omniverse Replicator, powered by OpenUSD, the engineers were able to generate large sets of diverse training data by varying many parameters including color, texture, background, lighting and more — allowing them to not only bootstrap but also quickly iterate on their AI models.
Committed to a future of widespread OpenUSD integration, Siemens was one of eight new general members that joined the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) last month, an organization dedicated to interoperability of 3D content through standardization.
Watch Fisher and other special guests discuss the impact of OpenUSD on industrial digitization workflows in this livestream replay:
Get Plugged Into the World of OpenUSD
Siemens and OpenUSD took center stage this week at Hannover Messe, the world’s leading industrial trade fair. Siemens CEO Roland Busch and Rev Lebaredian, vice president of Omniverse and simulation technology at NVIDIA, shared their vision on the potential of OpenUSD for customers in all industries.
For more on how Siemens is using OpenUSD to build and test complex AI-based automation systems completely virtually, watch the replay of the GTC session, “Virtual Commissioning of AI Vision Systems With OpenUSD.” All other sessions from GTC’s OpenUSD Day are available for viewing on demand.
Watch @BuschRo and @RevLebaredian discuss how #digitaltwins, powered by #AI and #OpenUSD, can drive productivity across all industries at #HM24.
— NVIDIA Design & Visualization (@NVIDIADesign) April 22, 2024
Get started with NVIDIA Omniverse by downloading the standard license free, access OpenUSD resources and learn how Omniverse Enterprise can connect teams. Follow Omniverse on Instagram, Medium and X. For more, join the Omniverse community on the forums, Discord server, Twitch and YouTube channels.
Featured image courtesy of Siemens, HD Hyundai.
