Metaverse – a buzzing trend word today, is more than just a fad. It is here and will significantly impact the way we lead our lives in the future. Metaverse represents an increasing integration of the real and the virtual, and blurring boundaries at various levels – physical, geographical and cultural.
A technology-driven world symbolized by the ever-growing presence of robotics and automation points to the increasing relevance of STEM education, robotics for kids and coding for kids, and one of the several reasons why you should read more on the subject of metaverse.
Metaverse – What it Means?
Metaverse means a collection of multiple universes. It’s a three-dimensional virtual world where you can find various interconnected virtual environments. It’s a world where you can have a virtual version of yourself performing several things like communicating, playing games etc.
Metaverse is an interactive and collaborative online environment where multiple users come together to be part of a world which could take the form of a workplace, a school, or a hangout space to have fun.
It’s much more than a virtual world. Here, you could be an active member of any of the worlds via a digital avatar and experience it in the first person.
Growing Interrelationship between Robotics and Metaverse
In the metaverse, you can bring your fantasies to life. You can live and work in this virtual world with minimal physical and language constraints and turn any of the fantasies into reality.
1. Simulations
The immense possibilities in the metaverse make it an ideal platform for robotics, a field that involves plenty of tinkering and experimentation to arrive at the solution.
The virtual world in the metaverse provides excellent room for simulations of the real world. Just like you create a digital avatar, you create a digital twin for robotics in the metaverse. So you can simulate large projects before you start building them.
This digital twin can update and evolve based on the simulation results and turn into an improved version of itself. One reason imagination can run wild and come true in the metaverse is due to its ability to simulate hazardous and unknown future environments that are difficult to replicate in the real world.
2. Data & Artificial Intelligence
To carry out simulations, you need data and lots of it. The data centres collect and consolidate the data to carry out the simulations. One can compare the data centre with a powerplant that powers the metaverse. You also need the proper infrastructure to accelerate the AI-based data process to enable such simulations.
The data centres process the data based on AI models trained in the real world and sometimes on simulated data. It keeps learning all the time and improves itself through self-learning.
AI is the new way of processing data. When humans write code, they explain to the computer what to do, and it does that. However, it’s difficult to explain certain things. That’s where AI-based programming comes in. It’s a software writing software. You feed the neural network model with a lot of data from the real world. It simulates the natural phenomenon with this actual data.
A lot of physics can be simulated in the virtual world but not in the real world. For example, a robot car tested in the real world will give only limited data based on the sensors and cameras. But virtual simulation can provide data for hazardous conditions as well.
For instance, you want to know, in the event of an earthquake, how will a particular facility hold up? You can simulate an earthquake and not wait for an earthquake to happen.
You can perform trial and error in the virtual world to see what can happen in the real world
3. Robots and Metaverse
A simple way to describe a robot is any autonomous object that can move independently. Moving requires the object to make decisions.
So, everything that moves will have an AI model to make a move and respond to the conditions and changes that are happening. These decisions help them to learn further by feeding the data back to the data centre.
So, if the machine is a self-driving robot car, the centre consolidates all the data and updates all the cars with the new data. There is perpetual learning faster than ever before
The virtual simulations in the metaverse allow you to live it before building it. In the metaverse, you create a digital twin of something that doesn’t exist in the real world. The way things stand, you can never expect to see a project being built without first simulating it.
It’s also important to point out that when you build something after it has undergone numerous simulations, you will likely make it successfully in the first shot.
We can take chunks out of the natural world in the metaverse and simulate it. Whatever is incomprehensible or a mystery in the real world becomes a technical problem to solve in the metaverse.
And in case you thought, whether machines will take over the universe, the answer is probably no.
It’s a collaborative work between humans and machines. While machines can process data in ways and at a speed that no human can, and humans can take decisions that no machine can handle. Humans and machines are part of the same team. They work together.
Metaverse and Kids
Metaverse can help foster creativity in kids and enable them to develop a keen interest in academics while simultaneously allowing them to communicate with their peers and teachers in a safe learning environment.
How it benefits kids
The practically tangible, hands-on experience that the metaverse offers children can help them better understand the universe and how things operate. A hands-on approach makes even abstract concepts very engaging for children.
A metaverse is a virtual environment that provides a safe space for kids to interact with their peers and teachers for a sound collaborative learning experience.
Challenges
A kid’s journey through the metaverse is not free from challenges. While the metaverse offers many advantages, you should also be aware of the many problems kids can encounter in this universe.
The immersive quality of the metaverse makes it potentially addictive. Also, it provides anonymity; therefore, kids are likely to face bullying by unknown users. An online environment also creates privacy issues and potential exposure to undesirable content for kids.
Regardless, of how one perceives it, the metaverse is the future, powered by the increasing role of robotics in real life. It’s the best time to encourage kids to take an interest in a STEM field, robotics classes for kids and the subjects of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
