Robots transporting heavy metal at a Toyota plant. Yaskawa’s robots working alongside human coworkers in factories. To advance efforts like these virtually, Rikei Corporation develops digital twin tooling to assist planning.
And if that weren’t enough, diversified retail holdings company Seven & i Holdings is running digital twin simulations to enhance customer experiences.
Physical AI and industrial AI, powered by NVIDIA Omniverse and Isaac and Metropolis, are propelling Japan’s industrial giants into the future. Such pioneering moves in robotic manipulation, industrial inspection and digital twins for human assistance are on full display at NVIDIA AI Summit Japan this week.
Looking Into the Future With Toyota Robotics
Toyota is tapping into NVIDIA Omniverse for physics simulation for robot motion and gripping to improve its metal forging capabilities. That’s helping to reduce the time it takes to teach robots to transport forging materials.
Toyota is verifying to reproduce its robotic work handling and robot motion with the accuracy of NVIDIA PhysX with Omniverse. Omniverse enables modeling digital twins of factories and other environments that accurately duplicate the physical characteristics of objects and systems in the real world, which is foundational to building physical AI for driving next-generation autonomous systems.
Advantages of Omniverse
Omniverse enables Toyota to model things like mass properties, gravity and friction for comparing results with physical representations of tests. This can help work in manipulation and robot motion.
It also allows Toyota to replicate the expertise of its senior employees with robotics for issues requiring a high degree of skills. And it increases safety and throughput since factory personnel are not required to work in the high temperatures and harsh environments associated with metal-forging production lines.
Driving Automation, Yaskawa Harnesses NVIDIA Isaac
Yaskawa is a leading global robotics manufacturer that has shipped more than 600,000 robots and offers nearly 200 robot models, including industrial robots for the automotive industry, collaborative robots and dual-arm robots.
The Japanese robotics leader is expanding into new markets with its MOTOMAN NEXT adaptive robot, which is moving into task adaptation, versatility and flexibility. Driven by advanced robotics enabled by the NVIDIA Isaac and Omniverse platforms, Yaskawa’s adaptive robots are focused on delivering automation for the food, logistics, medical and agriculture industries.
Advantages of Isaac
Using NVIDIA Isaac Manipulator, a reference workflow of NVIDIA-accelerated libraries and AI models, Yaskawa is integrating AI to its industrial arm robots, giving them the ability to complete a wide range of industrial automation tasks.
Yaskawa is using FoundationPose for precise 6D pose estimation and tracking. These AI models enhance the adaptability and efficiency of Yaskawa’s robotic arms, and the motion control enables sim-to-real transition, making them versatile and effective at performing complex tasks across a wide range of industries.
Creating Customer Experiences at Seven & i Holdings With Omniverse, Metropolis
Seven & i Holdings is one of the largest Japanese diversified retail holdings companies. The Japanese retail company runs a proof of concept to understand customer behaviors at its retail outlets with digital simulation.
Seven & i Holdings is pushing its research activities by tapping into NVIDIA Omniverse and NVIDIA Metropolis to better understand operations across its retail stores. Using NVIDIA Metropolis, a set of developer tools for building vision AI applications, store operations are analyzed with computer vision models, helping improve efficiency and safety.
Advantages of Metropolis
Combining digital twins with price recognition, object tracking and other AI-based computation enables it to generate useful behavioral insights about retail environments and customer interactions. Such information offers opportunities to dynamically generate and show personalized ads on digital signage displays targeted to customers.
The retailer plans to use Metropolis and the NVIDIA Merlin recommendation engine framework to create tailored suggestions to individual shoppers, responding to customer interests — based on data — like never before.
Virtually Revolutionizing, Rikei Corporation Launches Asset Library for Digital Twins
Rikei Corporation, a systems solutions provider, specializes in spatial computing and extended reality technology for the manufacturing sector.
The technology company has developed JAPAN USD Factory, which is a digital twin asset library specifically for the Japanese manufacturing industry. Developed on NVIDIA Omniverse, JAPAN USD Factory reproduces materials and equipment commonly used in manufacturing sites across Japan in a digital form so that Japanese manufacturers can more easily build digital twins of their factories and warehouses.
Advantages of JAPAN USD Factory
Rikei Corporation aims to streamline various stages of design, simulation and operations for the manufacturing process with these digital assets to enhance productivity with digital twins.
Developed with OpenUSD, a universal 3D asset interchange, JAPAN USD Factory allows developers to access its asset libraries for things like palettes and racks, offering seamless integration across tools and workflows.
Conclusion
Japan is at the forefront of industrial innovation, leveraging physical AI and industrial AI to drive advancements in robotic manipulation, industrial inspection, and digital twins for human assistance. With the help of NVIDIA Omniverse, Isaac, and Metropolis, Japanese companies like Toyota, Yaskawa, and Seven & i Holdings are revolutionizing their industries and setting the stage for a brighter future.
FAQs
Q: What is NVIDIA Omniverse?
A: NVIDIA Omniverse is a platform that enables the creation of digital twins, which are exact replicas of physical environments, allowing for simulation, testing, and optimization of complex systems.
Q: What is NVIDIA Isaac?
A: NVIDIA Isaac is a platform that enables the development of advanced robotics, including manipulation, inspection, and autonomous systems.
Q: What is NVIDIA Metropolis?
A: NVIDIA Metropolis is a set of developer tools for building vision AI applications, enabling the analysis of store operations and customer behaviors.
Q: What is JAPAN USD Factory?
A: JAPAN USD Factory is a digital twin asset library specifically for the Japanese manufacturing industry, developed on NVIDIA Omniverse, which reproduces materials and equipment commonly used in manufacturing sites across Japan.
