Manufacturer, university collaborating on extended reality, IIoT projects

Future computing in industrial environments is likely to include a tight coupling between the real world and digital content that enhances the real-world experience. Through a combination of technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and extended reality (XR), this area of research known as spatial computing will change the interaction between the physical and digital worlds through the overlay of virtual content on top of physical environments.

Bosch announced a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to further research in spatial computing. As part of the collaboration, Bosch Research will invest $3 million in a joint research effort with CMU, and Professor Anthony Rowe will join Bosch as part of the Bosch Research team, where he will serve as chief scientist. Rowe is currently the Siewiorek and Walker Family Professor in CMU’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He is a renowned expert in the field of embedded systems, and his research has focused on localization, spatial computing and networked real-time systems for sensing and control applications.

“While the vision for spatial computing is promising, the reality is that these complex applications are difficult to create and remain largely decoupled from the physical world,” Rowe said.

The goal of the international team is to design and demonstrate an architecture for XR applications in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) context designed around safety, reliability and real-time performance.

“The Bosch Research and Carnegie Mellon collaboration in the area of spatial computing will examine how to better enable blended virtual and real-world applications in areas such as industrial and mobility,” said Thomas Kropf, president, Bosch Research and Advance Engineering. “This is an important step to further strengthen the longstanding international collaboration with Carnegie Mellon and to advance the central field of spatial computing.”

Bosch and Carnegie Mellon will conduct research related to the industrial applications of spatial computing and the use of tools such as safe and real-time digital twins in manufacturing. This would include examining how an XR-instrumented factory of the future could have workers, machines and manufactured elements all with a digital counterpart.

There are two Dresden wafer fabs – one in the real world, and one in the digital world. Experts call this a “digital twin.” During construction, all parts of the factory and all relevant construction data relating to the plant as a whole were recorded digitally and visualized in a three-dimensional model. Courtesy: Bosch

“A broad range of new infrastructure and tools are needed to reach the level of robustness required to truly shift VR, AR and XR from advertising and entertainment to standard practice in the industrial domain,” said Christopher Martin, director of the Bosch Research and Technology Center in Pittsburgh.

Bosch and CMU continue collaboration on technology research

The collaboration is the latest in a longstanding relationship between Bosch and Carnegie Mellon. In 1990, a major gift from the Bosch Group established the Carnegie Bosch Institute (CBI), which is an alliance between Bosch and Carnegie Mellon where research focuses on topics of innovation at the intersection of business and technology, particularly the increasingly connected world and Internet of Things (IoT).

– Edited from a Bosch press release by CFE Media.

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