IoT’s role in the metaverse

In line with a recent Wired Magazine piece, the metaverse is primarily about our interactions with technology rather than any one particular kind of technology. To understand the significance of this change, have a look at Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s perspective:

Through the metaverse, we may provide actual presence to any digital environment by integrating computing into the real world and the real world into computer.

As a result, the metaverse holds the promise of a brand-new “phygital” experience in which components of the digital and physical worlds are deliberately combined.

The concept of the metaverse was initially presented some thirty years ago in science fiction. Only recently has the idea become truly viable, i.e., that technology permits the degree of interaction required to support a unified experience that simultaneously transcends the physical and digital, because it has taken the intervening three decades to amass the technologies required to enable instantiations of the metaverse.

The metaverse, arguably the most significant result of digital transformation available now, is fundamentally dependent on data. Therefore, the most data-centric technology advancements made during the previous 30 years are those that are needed to enable the metaverse. While a great deal of depth and breadth are implied here, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as the most disruptive technology and is also the one that is most essential to the creation of the metaverse.

A Metaverse of Sustainability

A Metaverse of Sustainability for Industrial Agriculture

It’s hard to think of a more demanding environment than industrial agriculture to serve as a “proving ground” for a sustainability metaverse. The value chain of this industry, which includes nitrous oxide, methane, and carbon dioxide among other gases, is anything but environmentally friendly (see image below). Aside from emissions, the industry is also at the center of a larger conversation about sustainability, which encompasses issues with waste and water management, biodiversity, and other topics. The environmental, social, and governance measures, as well as sustainability, go towards a company’s ESG criteria, which are a collection of non-financial metrics that are becoming more and more important in describing performance. That’s a lot to deal with for an industry that has been around for almost 10,000 years.

Industrial agriculture uses the widest range of indoor and outdoor environments, in sharp contrast to the home or workplace. Since it is impossible to design a single device that can be used for all agricultural use cases, the adoption of industrial IoT (IIoT) serves as a good example of the technological problem. While ammonia’s caustic effects may need to be taken into account for interior monitoring devices in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), inconsistent power and connection might be the most important needs for deployments in large outdoor settings with crops and cattle. To restate, in order to create a sustainable metaverse that can incorporate both the barn and the field, industrial agriculture introduces some of the most demanding physical and digital integration requirements.

Then, somewhat astonishingly, solution cooperation shows that a sustainable metaverse can embrace industrial agriculture at scale by utilizing Microsoft’s extensive and deep technology portfolio on Azure. Even with the scarce and rigorous criteria of IIoT deployments in the field,

Now, creative solutions can support the implied reciprocity in Nadella’s description of the metaverse:

The IIoT was “embedded” in agricultural areas.

Applying cloud-based AI models to field data yielded insights, and farmers received proactive feedback.

If value is judged, the current platform might be enhanced by sensors that can “hear” and/or “smell” (for example, by keeping an eye on the amounts of nitrous oxide, methane, and/or water vapor). Therefore, it makes sense to hypothesize that a sustainability metaverse will be more compelling the more visceral the experience gets (for example, by appealing to all senses). Remember that the exchange of ideas between humans and technology is the essence of the metaverse.

A Metaverse of Sustainability for the Smart City

Though there is room for improvement, the industrial agricultural use case and solutions can already be regarded as a sustainability metaverse. Naturally, industrial agriculture is not the only area where the Internet of Things is driving the convergence of sustainability and the metaverse.

I gave a summary of a flood prediction and management system utilized by the Town of Cary, North Carolina, in a previous post. A necessity shared by the industrial agricultural example mentioned above is the wide and thorough adoption of IoT technology. While there are already advantages to this “smart city,” there may be even more benefits if the Town’s approach is redesigned to meet the developing sustainability metaverse framework. The involvement of its residents is a component of the Town of Cary’s solution. Given that interaction is the lifeblood of IoT-powered metaverses, metropolitan locations appear to hold great promise for the future.

A data-first strategy is necessary for digital transformation. The metaverse is the same. IoT is arguably the main facilitator of smart farms and cities since it allows devices to instrument the physical environment with a wide variety of sensors. The use of cloud-based AI made it possible to extract important insights from field data, as the prior industrial agriculture solution showed. These insights have non-trivial value and affect metrics related to financial and ESG criteria.

But in the IoT-powered metaverse, artificial intelligence (AI) is just one of the “game-changing technologies” that can be applied. To demonstrate the potential role of other technologies in a sustainable metaverse, let’s look at the example of facilitating the switch to electric cars (EVs). The EPA data (below) makes clear how important it is to support the sector’s light-duty vehicle segment’s transition to electrified cars.

However, Microsoft partner Allego has created an intelligent electric vehicle charging system made possible by Azure Digital Twin because the changeover is anything but simple. Using real-time data, this system simulates the entities in the electric vehicle charging network to improve charging schedules. The modeled entities include utility companies, cars, and local information. This allows drivers of electric vehicles to have convenient, eco-friendly, and adaptable charging alternatives wherever they are.

The next logical step in the development of Microsoft IoT Sustainability supported by partner solution would be a reorganization that gradually puts it in the direction of a sustainability metaverse, much as the Town of Cary’s dashboard for flood prediction and management. In the end, real-time interactions between the digital and physical domains may allow infrastructure providers and EV users to enjoy a next-generation experience.

Know more about vist: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/green-tech-blog/how-iot-is-a-game-changer-for-the-sustainability-metaverse/ba-p/3291430