Foxconn Develops Physical AI-Enabled Smart Factories With Digital Twins

Overview

Foxconn (Hon Hai Technology Group) uses physically accurate digital twins integrating NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and OpenUSD to design, deploy, and manage high-volume production facilities, including those producing NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip systems. Its Fii Omniverse Digital Twin (FODT) platform creates virtual replicas of factories, enabling simulation-driven design, real-time monitoring, and optimized operations. Using NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo AI models, Foxconn achieves 150x faster computational fluid dynamics simulations for thermal analysis (minutes vs. hours). Standardized OpenUSD-based digital twin assets enable rapid migration of entire production lines between global factories (e.g., Taiwan to Mexico). Robot workcells and AGV logistics are simulated in FODT before physical deployment: complex robotic tasks such as screw tightening and cable insertion are simulated and refined with NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, FoundationPose models, and NVIDIA cuMotion, while AGV path is optimized by connecting simulations with Material Control Systems and NVIDIA cuOpt. Foxconn also built video analytics AI agents with NVIDIA Metropolis and the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for video search and summarization to monitor factory floors, and developed FoxBrain, an AI platform powered by NVIDIA NeMo trained in four weeks, described as Taiwan's first large language model with advanced reasoning capabilities. Leo Guo, General Manager of Fii Robotic Group, said the company believes it can cut factory setup and planning time by about 50%.

The challenge

Setting up, optimizing, and managing large-scale production lines across multiple global sites requires significant time and resources. Traditional methods for factory design, layout evaluation, robot programming, logistics planning, and environmental analysis can be slow, siloed, and computationally expensive, limiting a manufacturer's ability to perform real-time analysis, dynamically optimize operations, or replicate best practices across facilities.

The solution

Foxconn's Fii Omniverse Digital Twin (FODT) platform uses NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and OpenUSD to create physically accurate virtual replicas of its factories, including those producing NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip systems, enabling simulation-driven design, real-time monitoring, and optimized operations. NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo AI models accelerate computational fluid dynamics simulations for thermal analysis. Robot workcells and AGV logistics are simulated in the FODT platform before physical hardware investment: complex robotic tasks such as screw tightening and cable insertion are simulated and refined with NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, FoundationPose models, and NVIDIA cuMotion for collision-free motion planning, while AGV path is optimized by connecting simulations with Material Control Systems and NVIDIA cuOpt. NVIDIA Metropolis powers video analytics AI agents, built with the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for video search and summarization, to monitor the factory floor. Foxconn also developed FoxBrain, an AI platform powered by NVIDIA NeMo and trained in four weeks, described as Taiwan's first large language model with advanced reasoning capabilities.

Reported business value

Foxconn achieves 150x faster computational fluid dynamics simulations for thermal analysis (minutes vs. hours) using NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo. Standardized OpenUSD-based digital twin assets enable rapid migration of entire production lines between global factories (e.g., Taiwan to Mexico). Leo Guo, General Manager of Fii Robotic Group, said the company believes it can cut factory setup and planning time by about 50%.