Digital Twin and Metaverse Amalgamation in Shopping Stores
The ambition of trying to comprehend better and make a more predictable world leads to a considerable growth in IoT world. We aim at collecting more data to eliminate the unknown parameters from the equation at the end of the day to have a better prediction for the next moment or days. In addition, we are also quite curious as to learn the status of an object or environment, which are represented again by the data aggregation. Digital twin brings this case one step further, and it aims at creating a virtual model of a device and update this model through the data sent by its device, in other words, a digital copy of the device is created in the digital world. The digital twin can be used for various purposes, however, it is clear that one of the most useful area would be the prediction maintenance to prevent a failure beforehand. A piece of vehicle or a device in the smart factory production line would be changed on time thanks to the predictive maintenance before the production stops due to its failure, therefore the digital twin is a huge value for the whole industry.
As mentioned, the digital twin can be a key concept and implementation for many technologies. One of these, which is still in the infancy stage, is its placement in the Metaverse. The merge of digital twin with metaverse can provide us an environment where the real and virtual worlds are mixed. What does this mean? Assuming that you will purchase a product from a grocery shop, and for this, the path you will follow is either to go to the store, search it in the store and purchase it. An alternative way, which is mainly use today due to the pandemic conditions, you can order the product in the grocery online platforms The drawback at the online purchase is you are mostly alone, you can never receive a feeling that you really are in the grocery store environment. However, if the grocery store is created in the metaverse, then you feel that you go really to there, purchase a product, and so on. You may ask what is the role of the digital twin? Well, all data would come directly from the products, devices and services of the grocery store.
Selling Products of Grocery Stores in Metaverse
Figure : Grocery in Metaverse (Left Figure, Right Figure)
The grocery companies can build their own markets in one or more than one popular metaverses, such as in Decentraland or Sanbox, and the customer can visit the grocery store to purchase their products in the metaverse environment. The ordered products can be delivered with the delivery services to customers. The crucial point is here to reflect the status of the products directly on the metaverse environment, which will be performed with the digital twin approach. The grocery company might have not a store at all, i.e. all products can be delivered from the warehouses, however, customers would see in the virtual world totally another place. Even unknown companies can sell their product with a nicely provided virtual stores, which motivate customers to buy something in it.
If the customer has also a home in the metaverse, the ordered product can be visualized also in her home, once it is delivered. Even the delivery service can share the status information in the same environment. For all these scenarios the devices, their life cycles should be reflected in the metaverse level, and this role is taken by the digital twin approach. Therefore, the cooperation of metaverse and digital twin will be unavoidable at certain level.
Next-Level Online Product Ordering in Metaverse
Grocery stores should be seen only the beginning of online ordering in the metaverse, however, there are many other relevant use cases. Probably you heard the Metahero project that scans the whole human body and create a digital copy using a special device. This copy can be your visualization in the metaverse, and it has your exact dimensions, eyes, etc. This means you can visit a cloth store and try a cloth on your body, and if you like it, you can purchase it. What you ordered will be directly match your body, since you use your original body dimensions. The same thing can also happen for any article such as shoes, watches, book even you can read some pages, etc. You would have lots of combination possibilities to find the right article. Another great example can be seen while purchasing a product in the furniture shop. If you want to purchase a product for your home, however, you cannot visualize, how it will look like. In case your home is also in the metaverse, you can place it virtually into your home before purchasing the article. The examples are countless and mind-blowing.
How to determine the value of a real product in the metaverse?
The most speculative question can be the value of the product and how it can be determined if there is a huge fluctuation in the crypto market. This would change over time, and a more stabilized currency will be there. If not, there are sure some solution to tackle with it.