A Framework and Operational Procedures for Metaverses-Based Industrial Foundation Models

Industrial processes are typical cyber–physical–social systems (CPSSs), where the effective management of employees and the efficient control of machines play important roles. Traditional industries heavily rely on human labor and neglect the development of collection–utilization–transmission integrated information loops, thereby leading to high costs and low efficiency in operational procedures. To facilitate the natural interactions and smart operations for humans and machines, industrial foundation models (IFMs) based on metaverses are proposed in this article, serving as the operating systems of industrial parallel machines that provide sustainable data resources and scenarios for management and control experiments. On this basis, IFM comprised of vision foundation models, language foundation models, as well as operational foundation models, are constructed to manage resources in industrial parallel machines and provides comprehensive services for industrial procedures. On the one hand, IFM can efficiently manage various resources including computing power, digital assets, enterprise resources, and platform I/O via the proposed CPSS-based competing, sharing, scheduling, monitoring, allocating, and recovering mechanisms. On the other hand, imaginative intelligence, linguistic intelligence, and algorithmic intelligence can be achieved through vivid visualization of vision foundation models, natural conversations of language foundation models, and smart manipulation of operational foundation models. With the proposed IFM, cyber–physical–social intelligence (CPSI) can be achieved to enhance the efficient management and control of industrial processes.