Industrial Metaverse challenges, opportunities, and the impact on sustainability

Two important enabling technologies for the Industrial Metaverse (IM) are the Digital Twin (DT) and Extended Reality (XR), an umbrella term for Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR). Projects and use cases that utilise these technologies simultaneously are those taking the next step towards Industrial Metaverse realisation. With the concept still in its infancy, very little publicly available research has been conducted on such pioneering advances. The aim of this work is to summarise them and consider the factors which can prove to be challenges or opportunities for the Industrial Metaverse. Sustainability concerns proved to be both a challenge and an opportunity for pioneers and were analysed further. This research contributes a comparison of Industrial Metaverse applications based on Technology Readiness Level (TRL), a guide for Industrial Metaverse development, and a framework for assessing its Net Environmental Impact (NEI).