Siemens, Sony to Bring Mixed Reality to Industrial Development, CES 2024

Siemens and Sony have partnered to launch a mixed-reality headset to power the industrial metaverse.

The pair unveiled at CES 2024 the NX Immersive Designer, a headset built for designers and engineers to create concepts in mixed-reality environments. The device boasts OLED microdisplays and controllers for intuitive interaction with 3D objects.

The headset combines Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of industry-focused software with Sony’s new spatial content creation system to enable content creation for industrial applications.

The headset will become available later in 2024.

“We envision the industrial metaverse as a virtual world that is nearly indistinguishable from reality, enabling people — along with AI — to collaborate in real time to address real-world challenges,” said Siemens CEO Roland Busch. “This will empower customers to accelerate innovation, enhance sustainability and adopt new technologies faster and at scale, leading to a profound transformation of entire industries and our everyday lives.”

“By combining our technologies and Siemens’ expertise in engineering, we are excited to enable more immersive engineering that redefines the daily workflow of designers and engineers,” said Yoshinori Matsumoto, executive deputy president and officer in charge of technology and incubation at Sony. “The high-quality, realistic rendering and intuitive interaction will give creators tools to pursue a more immersive creative process that fuels further innovation in the industrial metaverse.”

Related:CES 2024: Expect Lots of ‘AI-washing’ in Gadgets

Generative AI partnership with AWS

Siemens also announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to integrate Amazon’s Bedrock platform with its Mendix low-code platform.

The deal would allow industrial-focused developers to access generative AI capabilities including a host of powerful models via a single API.

Siemens purchased the Mendix platform in 2018.

“Previously, when developers wanted to integrate generative AI models, they had to obtain access credentials, and write specialized function code,” a company statement reads.

“With the new Mendix-Amazon Bedrock integration, this can now be done with just a few clicks. Teams can create smart, industry-hardened applications without dedicated programming knowledge and users can interact with information easily via a graphical interface and the simplicity of drag and drop commands.”