The coming of the metauniverse is bound to have a profound impact on human society and physical commodity trade logistics. Although the national "14th Five-Year Plan" development plan and various policies to support the development of digital industry issued by relevant ministries and commissions did not explicitly carry out industrial layout with the concept of "meta-universe", the direction of relevant policies did cover various technical systems involved in the meta-universe. At the local level, incomplete statistics show that at least 30 provincial and municipal governments have issued about 90 policies explicitly supporting the metacommonial industry.
The port, shipping and logistics industry does not need to be a bold pathfinder, but it needs to be alert to the challenges of virtual economy caused by the meta-universe, and make use of relevant scientific and technological progress to arm and improve itself. Only by acting along the trend and taking advantage of it, can we achieve the results of turning crisis into opportunity.
The metaverse is the digital extension of human society
The emergence of the metauniverse is just a carnival in the Internet world, or a huge change in the whole world? Is the spokesperson of the virtual economy, or the real economy disturbs, will not let the service of trade and shipping logistics industry affected?
Metaverse is a virtual world created by people using information technology and connected (mapped or exchanged) with the real world. It is the digital extension of human society. To call it "universe" is to apply the concept of "parallel universe" in the science fiction concept, while the character "yuan" reflects its characteristics constructed from basic elements.
Some scholars describe the characteristics of the metaverse from four aspects: space-time, authenticity, independence and connectivity. In terms of time and space, the meta-universe is a digital world which is virtual in space dimension but real in time dimension. In terms of authenticity, there are both digital copies of the real world and creations of the virtual world in the metaverse. In terms of independence, the meta-universe is a parallel space-time that is closely connected with the external real world and highly independent. In terms of connectivity, the metaverse is an extended world that connects social relationships, financial flows, and physical mappings.
The author believes that to understand the metaverse, we can start from three perspectives:
First, the metaverse is a complex simulation system. The metaverse will continue to operate and deduce according to specific rules and laws, including but not limited to physical rules, economic rules, legal rules, logical rules, etc. The meta-universe can include rules and things in the real world, and will construct rules and things that do not exist in the real world. It will also put together the projection of things in the real world and the virtual things for deduction and calculation. Its complexity will surpass any simulation tool or game that humans have. It starts from the underlying logic and basic rules of constructing a world, and the rules need to be transparent, credible and decentralized.
Second, the metaverse is an integration of multiple technologies. There may be as many as hundreds of meta-universe correlation technologies, which can be clearly divided into four categories: first, human-computer interaction technologies, whether it is immersive experience technology that enables people to obtain information, or image recognition, brain-computer interface, natural language analysis NPL, etc. that enable machines to understand people better, are essentially intended to enable the meta-universe to interact with people; Artificial intelligence. Fictional characters in the meta-universe need to simulate human intelligence. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence can also help people improve their cognition and decision-making ability in the meta-universe, so it involves machine learning, simulation technology, big data technology, optimization technology, etc. Third, the Internet of Things, the connection between the meta-universe and the real world, not only through the sensor to collect the information of the real world and digital twin in the meta-universe, but also through the reverse automation control technology to execute the instructions of the virtual world in the real world, involving mobile network, high-speed communication, edge computing, sensing technology, automatic control and many other technologies; The fourth is distributed technology. The meta-universe requires a large amount of computing power, decentralization, consensus mechanism, disaster recovery and backup, which can be solved by distributed technologies including blockchain, cloud computing, edge computing, etc.
Third, the metaverse needs to be connected to the real world. The meta-universe is the digital extension of human society, which needs to connect the economic system, social system, material system, space-time system, etc., of the real world. On the one hand, the simulated time and space created by the metaverse, unlike sandbox simulation games, is consistent with and directly interactive with real world property rights, funds and relationships, which makes the metaverse anything but a game. On the other hand, the meta-universe is far larger than the real world, because it will introduce virtual characters, virtual assets, virtual services, etc., which requires technologies such as blockchain to solve the right of virtual assets, artificial intelligence technology to personify people, and Internet of Things and immersive technology to establish a channel between virtual and real.
In general, the realization of the meta-universe is extremely complex, and its development should be gradual. Based on the shared digital infrastructure, standards and protocols, the final shape is possible only through continuous integration and iterative upgrading of numerous systems, platforms and networks.
The digital transformation of the port and shipping industry has been accelerated
The digital transformation of port, shipping and logistics industry is advancing, and there is still a long way to go from metacosmic application. At present, the whole port, shipping and logistics industry is still in the start-up stage of digital transformation, which is difficult to be applied in the meta-universe. However, in some application scenarios of port and shipping logistics, digital twin, virtual reality, augmented reality, simulation computing and other technical elements have been explored.
According to the 2021 Edition of the Global Port and Shipping Informatization Development Report, the digital transformation of the port and shipping logistics industry should go through three stages in turn: business launch, operational efficiency and smart management. Online business refers to the flow and processing of the information involved in the business through the digital system, which mainly includes the formulation of system standards, the improvement of digital infrastructure, the pre-entry of services, and the interconnection and sharing of information. Operation enhancement is to make use of the characteristics of digital technology to directly empower the operation capability of enterprises, improve the actual ability of enterprises in the aspects of business automation, refinement and synergy, and achieve superior performance level beyond peers. Intelligent management should introduce artificial intelligence, big data, digital twin and other means, so that the digital system has the intelligent management ability of learning, optimization and innovation, and realize the innovation and development ability of intelligent decision-making, independent operation, mode reconstruction, ecological cooperation and so on.
At present, the digital transformation of port and airline logistics industry is still in the online stage on the whole, and some scenes have begun to explore some technical applications related to the concept of the metauniverse.
Digital twinning and virtual reality (VR) technologies have been explored in ports. By integrating multi-modal data such as port area production plan, vehicle monitoring, waterway monitoring, ship monitoring, meteorological sensing and Internet of Things data, some ports have been exploring the use of digital twin technology to assist port management decisions. For example, Miro Technology, a technology transfer enterprise of Shanghai Maritime University, has developed a digital twin control system for super large container terminals, which uses technologies such as high-fidelity modeling, virtual-real integration, port data association graph and efficiency early warning engine to achieve functions such as terminal operation situation recurrence, production index monitoring, mechanical configuration optimization, intelligent decision verification and fault prediction. The relevant results have been applied to Shanghai Yangshan Port Phase 4 Automated Container Terminal, Nantong Lu4 automated Container Terminal and other places. The "Marine Traffic Digital Twin VR System" of Shanghai International Shipping Research Center realizes the digital twin of docking and docking operations, major inbound and outbound channels, and anchorage ship supply operations. In addition to ships and wharves, it also provides VR visualization from the first-person perspective of various sea conditions such as meteorology, ocean currents, tides, etc. It can be used for Marine traffic flow management, accident scene restoration, simulation prediction and so on.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) technologies have been used in ship assisted steering. In this field, infrared camera AI video recognition algorithm is mainly used to integrate with traditional radar and AIS data, and driving auxiliary information such as water channel and ship distribution is superimposed on the bridge control system through AR technology. On the one hand, the BELUGA ACE system of Mitsui Merchant Marine, the ClearCruise AR system of Lesson Company, the EnVision system of Kono, and the FLIR system of Juntaixing are actively exploring AR navigation assistance, mapping AIS, radar and other information to video images through the conversion of geographic coordinates. Superimpose the position, speed, distance and other information of other ships on the driving screen; On the other hand, the AR ship intelligent navigation system of China Jiaotong Big Data, the ship situational awareness system of Shanghai Myrun Technology, and the AI maritime collision avoidance system of Oka use artificial intelligence visual recognition technology to overcome the recognition defects of radar and AIS, and actively identify the surface target in the video through AI technology, calculate the distance and azimuth, etc. In the multi - mode data fusion recognition in the forefront. In particular, Mairun Technology has successfully applied this technology to the visual berthing assistance of ships, waterway safety warning, intelligent ship sensing system and other scenes.
Virtual reality technology has been widely applied in port and shipping business operation training. Singapore's Eastern Pacific Shipping Company saved 75% of the training cost by VR training crew LNG filling. Daewoo Shipbuilding & Development established a VR painting education and training center that can simulate the same effect as the actual use of spray. Winterthur Engine Co., Ltd. has realized the training of crew members involved in various engine and engine room faults through the full mission engine room simulator (FMS) of virtual reality machine room Xpert. Sinopec Fuel Oil Company has improved the service ability of fuel supply personnel through the VR simulation system of ship fuel supply operation specifications. The VR training platform developed by Zhilong Science and Technology of Dalian Maritime University provides a low-cost, efficient and normalized training program.
To sum up, the digitalization application scenarios in the field of port and shipping logistics only involve some meta-universe related technologies. In addition to the restriction of the digitalization level of port and shipping industry, the maturity of meta-universe technology is also a restriction.
The most likely breakthrough application scenarios
The metaverse will inhibit the demand for physical commodity trade logistics. The cloud-based virtualization of money and consumer goods in the meta-universe may restrain physical consumption in the long run, while the suppression of physical trade will eventually lead to the stagflation of the scale of port and shipping logistics business. Of course, this process doesn't happen overnight, but gradually over decades. Moreover, the existence significance of port and shipping logistics industry is not threatened, because the demand for resource transfer in the real world will always exist.
For the port and shipping logistics industry, extensive and large-scale is not the future, but high-quality and fine. After all, the port, shipping and logistics industry has to give up the mode of competition solely relying on economies of scale and seek to compete by tapping the demand for high value-added services in the limited business scale. The meta-universe may indeed have far-reaching influence and may be replaced by new concepts. However, as a service industry based on physical trade, the core value of port and shipping logistics must be service quality, standard and experience. The port, shipping and logistics industry can participate in the dividends brought by the upgrading of metaverse related technologies and enable business with digital technology. The following application scenarios may be the breakthrough point of combining port, shipping and logistics industry with the application of metacosmic correlation technology:
First, immersive remote control operations. Whether it's operating a port crane, driving a ship, repairing a turbine, or working in a warehouse, things that used to require people to work in the field are likely to be transformed into things that people can do remotely in a virtual immersive environment. All operations in the digital twin environment will control real events in another location. Let people feel as if they are there but also comfortable to complete the work.
Second, the avatar does the heavy, boring work. Virtual characters created in the meta-universe have the learning ability of artificial intelligence and can remember massive business knowledge. Virtual characters can be used as work assistants of port and shipping logistics practitioners to help deal with tedious communication, bill checking, application filling and so on. Current process automation robot (RPA) technology is the bud of this application.
Third, hypersimulation business planning. By using the digital twin simulation of port and shipping logistics site, vehicle, route and equipment in the meta-universe, it is possible to simulate the events happening in the real world through simulation operation, and predict the occurrence of congestion, failure, idle and danger in advance with faster calculation speed. In order to provide more optimized, smoother and more reliable design and scheme, we should intervene and intervene in advance of inaccurate planning, unreasonable planning, unreliable operation and uncontrollable process.
Fourth, virtual logistics organization. Taking advantage of the changes in socio-economic relations brought about by the meta-universe, more freelance port and shipping logistics personnel can collaborate with each other to complete a traditional logistics business in a more self-organized environment. Social logistics resources can operate freely under the unified operation and distribution rules of the meta-universe, so as to form a logistics service network covering the whole country and even the world.
Fifth, virtual delivery replaces real delivery. Sometimes the act of buying a physical good does not mean that the owner wants it immediately, and the metaverse may create a kind of virtual logistics delivery, where holding virtual goods before you actually need them becomes a true "distribution on demand".
Sixth, precipitation quality data and smart management. The development of the meta-universe will enable more logistics business flow and transactions to be reached online, which will precipitate the corresponding data in a timely, comprehensive and accurate manner. Based on this, big data analysis technology will play a great role to provide effective support for business decisions with more detailed, real-time and multi-dimensional calculations. Through the comprehensive and insightful data cockpit, The decision maker of port and shipping logistics will complete the operation decision and judgment with the efficiency of "minute and second", so as to keep the initiative in the market competition.
