Posts in category: nVidia AI

What started as two classmates seeking a free graduation trip to Bali subsidized by a university project ended up as an AI-driven sea-cleaning boat prototype built of empty water bottles, hobbyist helicopter blades and a GoPro camera.

University of Hong Kong grads Sidhant Gupta and Utkarsh Goel have since then made a splash with their Clearbot autonomous trash collection boats enabled by NVIDIA Jetson.

“We came up with the idea to clean the water there because there are a lot of dirty beaches, and the local community depends on them to be clean for their tourism business,” said Gupta, who points out the same is true for touristy regions of Hong Kong and India, where they do business now.

Before launching Clearbot, in 2021, the university friends put up their proof-of-concept waste collection boat on a website and then just forgot about it, he said, starting work after graduation. A year later, a marine construction company proposed a water cleanup project, and the pair developed their prototype around the effort to remove three tons of trash daily from a Hong Kong marine construction site.

“They were using a big boat and a crew of three to four people every day, at a cost of about $1,000 per day — that’s when we realized we can build this and do it better and at lower cost,” said Gupta.

Plastic makes up about 85% of ocean litter, with an estimated 11 million metric tons entering oceans every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Clearbot aims to remove waste from waterways before it gets into oceans.

Cleaning Waters With Energy-Efficient Jetson Xavier

Clearbot, based in Hong Kong and India, has 24 employees developing and deploying its water-cleaning electric-powered boats that can self-dock at solar charging stations.

The ocean vessels, ranging in length from 10 to 16 feet, have two cameras — one for navigation and another for waste identification of what boats have scooped up. The founders trained garbage models on cloud and desktop NVIDIA GPUs from images they took in their early days, and now they have large libraries of images from collecting on cleanup sites. They’ve also trained models that enable the Clearbot to autonomously navigate away from obstacles. 

The energy-efficient Jetson Xavier NX allows the water-cleaning boats — propelled by battery-driven motors — to collect for eight hours at a time before returning to recharge.   

Harbors and other waterways frequented by tourists and businesses often rely on diesel-powered boats with workers using nets to remove garbage, said Gupta. Traditionally, a crew of 50 people in such scenarios can run about 15 or 20 boats, estimates Gupta. With Clearbot, a crew of 50 people can run about 150 boats, boosting intake, he said.  

“We believe that humanity’s relationship with the ocean is sort of broken — the question is can we make that better and is there a better future outcome?” said Gupta. “We can do it 100% emissions-free, so you’re not creating pollution while you’re cleaning pollution.” 

Customers Harnessing Clearbot for Environmental Benefits

Kingspan, a maker of building materials, is working with Clearbot to clean up trash and oil in rivers and lakes in Nongstoin, India. So far, the work has resulted in the removal of 1.2 tons of waste per month in the area. 

Umiam Lake in Meghalaya, India, has long been a tourist destination and place for fishing. However, it’s become so polluted, that areas of the water’s surface aren’t visible with all of the floating trash. 

The region’s leadership is working with Clearbot in a project with the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business to help remove the trash from the lake. Since the program began three months ago, Clearbot has collected 15 tons of waste.

Mitigating Environmental Impacts With Clearbot Data 

Clearbot has expanded its services beyond trash collection to address environmental issues more broadly. The company is now assisting in marine pollution control for sewage, oil, gas and other chemical spills as well as undersea inspections for dredging projects, examining algae growth and many other areas where its autonomous boats can capture data.

Unforeseen to Clearbot’s founders, they have discovered that the data about garbage collection and other environmental pollutants can be used in mitigation strategies. The images that they collect are geotagged, so if somebody is trying to find the source of a problem, backtracking from Clearbot’s software dashboard on some of the data on findings is a good place to start.

For example, if there’s a concentration of plastic bottle waste in a particular area, and it’s of a particular type, local agencies could track back to where it’s coming from. This could allow local governments to mitigate the waste by reaching out to the polluter to put a stop to the activity that is causing it, said Gupta.

“Let’s say I’m a municipality and I want to ban plastic bags in my area — you need the NGOs, the governments and the change makers to acquire the data to back their justifications for why they want to close down the plastic plant up the stream,” said Gupta. “That data is being generated on board your NVIDIA Jetson Xavier.”

Learn about NVIDIA Jetson Xavier and Earth-2

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Improving the sustainability of manufacturing involves optimizing entire product lifecycles — from material sourcing and transportation to design, production, distribution and end-of-life disposal.

According to the International Energy Agency, reducing the carbon footprint of industrial production by just 1% could save 90 million tons of CO₂ emissions annually. That’s equivalent to taking more than 20 million gasoline-powered cars off the road each year.

Technologies such as digital twins and accelerated computing are enabling manufacturers to reduce emissions, enhance energy efficiency and meet the growing demand for environmentally conscious production.

Siemens and NVIDIA are at the forefront of developing technologies that help customers achieve their sustainability goals and improve production processes.

Key Challenges in Sustainable Manufacturing

Balancing sustainability with business objectives like profitability remains a top concern for manufacturers. A study by Ernst & Young in 2022 found that digital twins can reduce construction costs by up to 35%, underscoring the close link between resource consumption and construction expenses.

Yet, one of the biggest challenges in driving sustainable manufacturing and reducing overhead is the presence of silos between departments, different plants within the same organization and across production teams. These silos arise from a variety of issues, including conflicting priorities and incentives, a lack of common energy-efficiency metrics and language, and the need for new skills and solutions to bridge these gaps.

Data management also presents a hurdle, with many manufacturers struggling to turn vast amounts of data into actionable insights — particularly those that can impact sustainability goals.

According to a case study by The Manufacturer, a quarter of respondents surveyed acknowledged that their data shortcomings negatively impact energy efficiency and environmental sustainability, with nearly a third reporting that data is siloed to local use cases.

Addressing these challenges requires innovative approaches that break down barriers and use data to drive sustainability. Acting as a central hub for information, digital twin technology is proving to be an essential tool in this effort.

The Role of Digital Twins in Sustainable Manufacturing

Industrial-scale digital twins built on the NVIDIA Omniverse development platform and Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) are transforming how manufacturers approach sustainability and scalability.

These technologies power digital twins that take engineering data from various sources and contextualize it as it would appear in the real world. This breaks down information silos and offers a holistic view that can be shared across teams — from engineering to sales and marketing.

This enhanced visibility enables engineers and designers to simulate and optimize product designs, facility layouts, energy use and manufacturing processes before physical production begins. That allows for deeper insights and collaboration by helping stakeholders make more informed decisions to improve efficiency and reduce costly errors and last-minute changes that can result in significant waste.

To further transform how products and experiences are designed and manufactured, Siemens is integrating NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud application programming interfaces into its Siemens Xcelerator platform, starting with Teamcenter X, its cloud-based product lifecycle management software.

These integrations enable Siemens to bring the power of photorealistic visualization to complex engineering data and workflows, allowing companies to create physics-based digital twins that help eliminate workflow waste and errors.

Siemens and NVIDIA have demonstrated how companies like HD Hyundai, a leader in sustainable ship manufacturing, are using these new capabilities to visualize and interact with complex engineering data at new levels of scale and fidelity.

HD Hyundai is unifying and visualizing complex engineering projects directly within Teamcenter X.

Physics-based digital twins are also being utilized to test and validate robotics and physical AI before they’re deployed into real-world manufacturing facilities.

Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, has introduced a virtual plant that pushes the boundaries of industrial automation. Foxconn’s digital twin platform, built on Omniverse and NVIDIA Isaac, replicates a new factory in the Guadalajara, Mexico, electronics hub to allow engineers to optimize processes and train robots for efficient production of NVIDIA Blackwell systems.

By simulating the factory environment, engineers can determine the best placement for heavy robotic arms, optimize movement and maximize safe operations while strategically positioning thousands of sensors and video cameras to monitor the entire production process.

The use of digital twins, like those in Foxconn’s virtual factory, is becoming increasingly common in industrial settings for simulation and testing.

Foxconn’s chairman, Young Liu, highlighted how the digital twin will lead to enhanced automation and efficiency, resulting in significant savings in time, cost and energy. The company expects to increase manufacturing efficiency while reducing energy consumption by over 30% annually.

By connecting data from Siemens Xcelerator software to its platform built on NVIDIA Omniverse and OpenUSD, the virtual plant allows Foxconn to design and train robots in a realistic, simulated environment, revolutionizing its approach to automation and sustainable manufacturing.

Making Every Watt Count

One consideration for industries everywhere is how the rising demand for AI is outpacing the adoption of renewable energy. This means business leaders, particularly manufacturing plant and data center operators, must maximize energy efficiency and ensure every watt is utilized effectively to balance decarbonization efforts alongside AI growth.

The best and simplest means of optimizing energy use is to accelerate every possible workload.

Using accelerated computing platforms that integrate both GPUs and CPUs, manufacturers can significantly enhance computational efficiency.

GPUs, specifically designed for handling complex calculations, can outperform traditional CPU-only systems in AI tasks. These systems can be up to 20x more energy efficient when it comes to AI inference and training.

This leap in efficiency has fueled substantial gains over the past decade, enabling AI to address more complex challenges while maintaining energy-efficient operations.

Building on these advances, businesses can further reduce their environmental impact by adopting key energy management strategies. These include implementing energy demand management and efficiency measures, scaling battery storage for short-duration power outages, securing renewable energy sources for baseload electricity, using renewable fuels for backup generation and exploring innovative ideas like heat reuse.

Join the Siemens and NVIDIA session at the 7X24 Exchange 2024 Fall Conference to discover how digital twins and AI are driving sustainable solutions across data centers.

The Future of Sustainable Manufacturing: Industrial Digitalization

The next frontier in manufacturing is the convergence of the digital and physical worlds in what is known as industrial digitalization, or the “industrial metaverse.” Here, digital twins become even more immersive and interactive, allowing manufacturers to make data-driven decisions faster than ever.

“We will revolutionize how products and experiences are designed, manufactured and serviced,” said Roland Busch, president and CEO of Siemens AG. “On the path to the industrial metaverse, this next generation of industrial software enables customers to experience products as they would in the real world: in context, in stunning realism and — in the future — interact with them through natural language input.”

Leading the Way With Digital Twins and Sustainable Computing

Siemens and NVIDIA’s collaboration showcases the power of digital twins and accelerated computing for reducing the environmental impact caused by the manufacturing industry every year. By leveraging advanced simulations, AI insights and real-time data, manufacturers can reduce waste and increase energy efficiency on their path to decarbonization.

Learn more about how Siemens and NVIDIA are accelerating sustainable manufacturing.

Read about NVIDIA’s sustainable computing efforts and check out the energy-efficiency calculator to discover potential energy and emissions savings.

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Bundle up this fall with GeForce NOW and Dragon Age: The Veilguard with a special, limited-time promotion just for members.

The highly anticipated role-playing game (RPG) leads 10 titles joining the ever-growing GeForce NOW library of over 2,000 games.

A Heroic Bundle

Fight for Thedas’ future at Ultimate quality this fall as new and existing members who purchase six months of GeForce NOW Ultimate can get BioWare and Electronic Arts’ epic RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard for free when it releases on Oct. 31.

Rise as Rook, Dragon Age’s newest hero. Lead a team of seven companions, each with their own unique story, against a new evil rising in Thedas. The latest entry in the legendary Dragon Age franchise lets players customize their characters and engage with new romancable companions whose stories unfold over time. Band together and become the Veilguard.

Ultimate members can experience BioWare’s latest entry at full GeForce quality, with support for NVIDIA DLSS 3, low-latency gameplay with NVIDIA Reflex, and enhanced image quality and immersion with ray-traced ambient occlusion and reflections. Ultimate members can also play popular PC games at up to 4K resolution with extended session lengths, even on low-spec devices.

Move fast — this bundle is only available for a limited time until Oct. 30.

Supernatural Thrills, Super New Games

New World: Aeternum is the latest content for Amazon Games’ hit action RPG. Available for members to stream at launch this week, it offers a thrilling action RPG experience in a vast, perilous world. Explore the mysterious island, encounter diverse creatures, face supernatural dangers and uncover ancient secrets.

The game’s action-oriented combat system and wide variety of weapons allow for diverse playstyles, while the crafting and progression systems offer depth for long-term engagement. Then, grab the gaming squad for intense combat and participate in large-scale battles for territorial control.

Members can look for the following games available to stream in the cloud this week:

• Neva (New release on Steam, Oct. 15)
• MechWarrior 5: Clans (New release on Steam and Xbox, available on PC Game Pass, Oct. 16)
• A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead (New release on Steam, Oct. 17)
• Assassin’s Creed Mirage (New release on Steam, Oct. 17)
• Artisan TD (Steam) 
• ASKA (Steam)
• Dungeon Tycoon (Steam)
• South Park: The Fractured But Whole (Available on PC Game Pass, Oct 16. Members will need to activate access)
• Spirit City: Lofi Sessions (Steam)
• Star Trucker (Xbox, available on Game Pass)

What are you planning to play this weekend? Let us know on X or in the comments below.

bundle up…

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) October 16, 2024

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