AVEVA and NVIDIA Propel Industrial Automation with AI-Driven Solutions

AVEVA, a prominent figure in industrial software, is collaborating with NVIDIA to advance autonomous operations in the energy, power, and chemicals industries. By integrating AVEVA's Dynamic Simulation platform with NVIDIA's Raptor deep reinforcement learning (DRL) engine, the partnership aims to transform traditional industrial processes into fully autonomous operations, according to a blog post by NVIDIA.

Revolutionizing Industrial Operations

The collaboration focuses on utilizing AI to create sophisticated process simulation solutions. This approach is expected to significantly reduce unplanned downtime, maximize production, and improve product quality. The integration of AI-driven DRL agents facilitates advanced reasoning and iterative planning, pushing the boundaries of industrial control, system-level autonomy, and the development of fully autonomous plants.

Addressing Challenges in Industrial Automation

Traditional control technologies often struggle with transient events, such as unexpected disturbances in industrial plants. In these situations, operators typically resort to manual control to stabilize the plant, which can lead to costly outcomes. The shift towards greater industrial autonomy promises several benefits, including enhanced safety, increased operational efficiency, cost reduction, and improved environmental sustainability.

Strategic Collaboration with Schneider Electric

Alongside Schneider Electric, AVEVA and NVIDIA are deploying their expertise across industrial process and compute infrastructure use cases. This involves training autonomous AI agents using digital process twins and implementing high-fidelity digital twins for real-time monitoring and control. Additionally, data center reference designs are being developed to support AI workloads, enhancing deployment speed and reliability.

Outcomes of the AVEVA-NVIDIA Integration

Through their collaboration, AVEVA's Dynamic Simulation has been tested with NVIDIA's Raptor engine. The simulation builds dynamic twins of process plants for various applications, including operator training and process design. The integration allows for large-scale reinforcement learning using accelerated computing, either on-premises or in the cloud, to optimize industrial processes.

An example of the successful application is in chemical distillation, where the DRL agent trained with AVEVA Dynamic Simulation was able to stabilize the process twice as fast as manual operators, maintaining temperature and product quality even during significant feed changes.

Future Prospects

AVEVA plans to pilot, productize, and scale the Dynamic Simulation with Raptor. This will involve working with leading energy companies to test the solution, ensuring confidence before full-scale deployment. Utilizing the NVIDIA-accelerated computing platform, AVEVA aims to streamline training and deployment processes with no-code workflows, facilitating the integration of AI-driven solutions in industrial settings.

For further insights into the collaboration, explore the AVEVA and NVIDIA partnership.