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Taiwanese electronics makers are using Nvidia’s industrial digitalization, or digital twin, technology to transform their factories into more autonomous facilities.
These companies are already part of Nvidia’s supply chain as makers of the AI supercomputers or PCs that use Nvidia’s chips. But now they’re also potentially benefiting from the automation that is made possible by Nvidia’s AI and graphics chips.
The new reference workflow combines Nvidia Metropolis vision AI, Nvidia Omniverse physically based rendering and simulation, and Nvidia Isaac AI robot development and deployment. All of this tech gets used in digital twins.
Such twins enable a company to design a factory in digital form through Omniverse simulations anchored by Nvidia’s chips. The engineers designing the factory can get feedback from the simulation about how good the design is. Once it is perfected, they can build the factory in the real world. And with sensors on the factory, they can get digital information about how good the design really is and then modify the digital design in a feedback loop for continuous improvement.
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Because this has worked so well, Nvidia has invested heavily in software for the Omniverse simulations, and it has also invested heavily in its Isaac robotics platform. Nvidia also created its Metropolis tech for simulating how factories and even cities can work. And the combination of all of these things helps Nvidia sell more AI processors — and get lofty stock market valuations for being an AI pureplay.
It’s interesting how Nvidia is using its robotics tech to automate factories so that its robotics tech can get used more. And Nvidia’s rivals don’t have as much to invest in rival ecosystems, and so they have a harder time competing with Nvidia.
In a keynote talk at Computex, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talked about these new announcements related to Taiwan’s electronics firms. He also noted that Nvidia’s robotics is getting adopted by companies who plan to use tens of millions of them. By using the workflow to build digital twins for real-time simulation of different factory layouts, manufacturers can optimize space, processes and efficiency without costly
physical changes, Nvidia said.
“AI for manufacturing is here. Every factory is becoming more and more autonomous due to the transformational impact of generative AI and digital twin technologies,” said Deepu Talla, vice president of robotics and edge computing at Nvidia, in a statement. “With Nvidia Omniverse, Metropolis and Isaac, the industrial ecosystem can accelerate its adoption of autonomous technologies, helping advance operational efficiencies and lower costs.”
Foxconn and others use Nvidia robotics tech for automated factories
Delta Electronics, Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron are using the reference workflow to
build, simulate and operate their robotics-enhanced facilities.
In a demo during the Computex keynote, Huang demonstrated how Foxconn, one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers, develops digital twins of its factories on Nvidia Omniverse, a platform for virtually integrating 3D data from leading industry tools such as Teamcenter from the Siemens Xcelerator platform.
Foxconn operates more than 170 factories around the world — the latest one a virtual plant pushing the state of the art in industrial automation.
It’s the digital twin of a new factory in Guadalajara, hub of Mexico’s electronics industry. Foxconn’s engineers are defining processes and training robots in this virtual environment, so the physical plant can
produce at high efficiency the next engine of accelerated computing, Nvidia Blackwell HGX systems.
To design an optimal assembly line, factory engineers need to find the best placement for dozens of robotic arms, each weighing hundreds of pounds. To accurately monitor the overall process, they situate
thousands of sensors, including many networked video cameras in a matrix to show plant operators all the right details.
Such challenges are why companies like Foxconn are increasingly creating virtual factories for simulation and testing.
“Our digital twin will guide us to new levels of automation and industrial efficiency, saving time, cost and energy,” said Young Liu, chairman of Foxconn, which last year had revenues of nearly $200 billion.
Foxconn is building its digital twin with software from the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio including Teamcenter and Nvidia Omniverse, a platform for developing 3D workflows and applications based on
OpenUSD.
Nvidia and Siemens announced in March that they will connect Siemens Xcelerator applications to Nvidia Omniverse Cloud API microservices. Foxconn will be among the first to employ the combined services, so its digital twin is physically accurate and visually realistic.
Engineers will employ Teamcenter with Omniverse APIs to design robot work cells and assembly lines. Then they’ll use Omniverse to pull all the 3D CAD elements into one virtual factory where their robots will be trained with NVIDIA Isaac Sim.
A growing set of manufacturers is building digital twins to streamline factory processes. Foxconn is among the first to take the next step in automation — training their AI robots in the digital twin. Inside the Foxconn virtual factory, robot arms from manufacturers such as Epson can learn how to see, grasp and move objects with Nvidia Isaac Manipulator, a collection of Nvidia-accelerated libraries and AI
foundation models for robot arms.
For example, the robot arms may learn how to pick up a Blackwell server and place it on an autonomous mobile robot (AMR). The arms can use Isaac Manipulator’s cuMotion to find inspection paths for products, even when objects are placed in the way.
Other manufacturers join in
Delta Electronics, a manufacturing leader in electronics and IoT-based smart green solutions, is using Nvidia Isaac Sim, an extensible robotics simulation platform developed on Omniverse and OpenUSD, an open and extensible ecosystem for 3D worlds, to virtually integrate its demo production lines. It then generates physically accurate, photorealistic synthetic data for training computer vision models for its Nvidia Metropolis-powered automatic optical inspection (AOI) and defect detection solutions.
Pegatron, a Taiwan-based manufacturer and service provider, is deploying an Nvidia Metropolis multi-camera workflow and launching a new suite of services that connects its Omniverse and Metropolis factory digital twin workflow to Nvidia NeMo and Nvidia NIM (Nvidia inference microservices) to help factory operators “chat” in real time. The technological advances will help improve worker safety and productivity in Pegatron’s massive factory network that spans over 21 million square feet and produces over 15 million assemblies per month.
Wistron, a global leader in electronics manufacturing, has built digital twins of its factories to accelerate the production of Nvidia DGX and Nvidia HGX servers. Now, it is extending its use of Omniverse to develop digital twins of the data centers that are used to test and ensure the quality, performance and energy consumption of newly assembled Nvidia HGX systems.
Using Omniverse to simulate its facility and workflows first, Wistron brought its factory online in half the typical time — just two and a half months instead of five — and increased worker efficiency by more than 50% through testing and optimizing layouts.
“The combination of Nvidia Omniverse and Nvidia Metropolis allows us to test new layouts virtually to identify new processes and monitor real-time operations using live IoT data from every machine on the production line,” said Alec Lai, president of global manufacturing at Wistron, in a statement. “Digitalizing our factory planning process has reduced end-to-end cycle times by 50%.”
Taiwan systems integrator Kenmec is an early implementer of both Omniverse and Metropolis workflows and services for major manufacturers such as Giant Group. To help developers across the ecosystem, these digital twin workflows are available as a reference architecture series.
Nvidia robotics adopted by tech companies for tens of millions of autonomous machines
Nvidia also said the world’s leaders in robot development are adopting the Nvidia Isaac robotics
platform for the research, development and production of the next generation of AI-enabled autonomous machines and robots.
BYD Electronics, Siemens, Teradyne Robotics and Intrinsic, an Alphabet company, are among more than a dozen robotics industry leaders globally that are integrating Isaac accelerated libraries, physically based simulation and AI models into their software frameworks and robot models to make factories, warehouses and distribution centers highly efficient and safer for their human coworkers, and act as intelligent assistants for repetitive or ultra-precise tasks.
“The era of robotics has arrived. Everything that moves will one day be autonomous,” said Huang. “We are working to accelerate generative physical AI by advancing the Nvidia robotics stack, including Omniverse for simulation applications, Project GR00T humanoid foundation models and the Jetson Thor robotics computer.”
The Isaac platform features a suite of Nvidia-accelerated libraries, AI foundation models and simulation technologies that are available today to robot makers to integrate into their technology stacks.
Isaac’s early adopters are leaders in robotics and autonomous machine development across Asia, Europe and North America.
Siemens, global leader in industrial automation software and systems, is using Nvidia Isaac Sim for its powerful software-in-the-loop capabilities. The Isaac technologies accelerate Siemens development and testing of advanced robotics skills such as SIMATIC Robot PickAI (PRO) and SIMATIC Robot Pack AI. The AI vision software provides cognitive AI-driven capabilities and enables industrial robot systems to autonomously and reliably pick-and-pack arbitrary items without any prior training of the AI by the user.
Siemens delivers industrial-grade AI and is pushing it to the forefront of robotics by seamlessly integrating with automation solutions and making it easy to use when deployed on a NVIDIA-powered Siemens industrial PC foundation, bringing vision AI to the ecosystem of industrial robots.
Intrinsic, a software and AI robotics subsidiary of Alphabet that acquired the Open Source Robotics Corporation in late 2022, has successfully tested Isaac Manipulator in its robot-agnostic software platform. Intrinsic has demonstrated, using Manipulator, the potential for a scalable, universally applicable robotic-grasping skill to work across grippers, environments and objects.
“We couldn’t have found a better collaborator in Nvidia, who are helping to pave the way for foundation models to have a profound impact on industrial robotics,” said Wendy Tan White, CEO of Intrinsic in a statement. “As our teams work together on integrating NVIDIA Isaac and Intrinsic’s platform, the potential value we can unlock for millions of developers and businesses is immense.”
BYD Group has a strong manufacturing footprint across four major industries, including electronics, automotive, new energy and rail transportation worldwide. Its one subsidiary, BYD Electronics (BYDE), a global leading provider of high-tech and innovative products, is developing a full range of autonomous mobile robots that provide factories with complete logistics solutions using Isaac Sim and Isaac Perceptor.
“BYDE has a strong focus on helping customers accelerate deployment of logistics applications,” said Chris Yotive, senior business developing director of BYD Electronics, in a statement. “In collaboration with NVIDIA, we have developed advanced autonomous mobile robots powered by NVIDIA Isaac that will improve worker safety, reduce production costs and enhance production intelligence for our customers.”
Universal Robots (UR) and Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), Teradyne Robotics companies, are using Isaac to integrate AI into automation. UR is integrating Isaac Manipulator into its PolyScope X software platform to unlock new cobot solutions. MiR is leveraging Isaac Sim to generate synthetic data and simulate its MiR1200 Pallet Jack for real-world deployments.
“The key to tackling our customers’ challenges in robotics lies in the industry’s ability to work together, in one collective effort,” said Ujjwal Kumar, group president of Teradyne Robotics. “With Nvidia Isaac’s advanced AI and simulation capabilities plugged into our large installed base of autonomous mobile robots and cobots, we will push the envelope of innovation to achieve swift solutions for multiple
industries.”
The Nvidia Isaac platform is modular, enabling companies to adopt individual or several technologies together. Companies leveraging Isaac Perceptor for development of advanced perception-based autonomous mobile robots include: ArcBest, BYD Electronics, Gideon, idealworks and RGo Robotics.
Companies leveraging Isaac Manipulator for building AI-based robotic arms include: Solomon, Techman Robot, Vention and Yaskawa.
Over 100 companies are adopting Isaac Sim to simulate, test and validate robotic applications, including Hexagon, Husqvarna Group and MathWorks. Isaac Lab is being adopted by Agility, Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, Fourier Intelligence and Sanctuary AI.
Nvidia IGX with Holoscan
To address the increasing need for real-time AI computing at the industrial edge, Nvidia also announced the general software availability of Nvidia AI Enterprise-IGX with Nvidia Holoscan on the Nvidia IGX platform. Together, they empower solution providers within the medical, industrial and scientific computing sectors to develop and deploy edge AI solutions faster, with enterprise-grade software and support.
Nvidia AI Enterprise-IGX is a new offering providing enterprises with unprecedented performance, security and support for the entire edge computing software stack, streamlining AI-powered operations and the deployment of AI applications at scale.
Nvidia Holoscan is a sensor-processing platform for streamlining the development and deployment of AI and high-performance computing applications to deliver real-time insights.
By combining Nvidia AI Enterprise-IGX and Holoscan on IGX, NVIDIA offers an enterprise-grade platform that delivers powerful AI compute, flexible sensor integration, real-time performance and functional safety for the industrial edge.
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