What will industrial collaboration of the future look like—and what role will the metaverse play? Fraunhofer experts invite visitors to immerse themselves in new forms of engineering, service development, and human-machine interaction. At HANNOVER MESSE from April 20 to 24, 2026, Fraunhofer IAO aims to bring the Industrial Metaverse to life—with immersive visualizations, photorealistic AI avatars, and digital twins that already offer concrete added value to companies today.

Discover Engineering Potential

“At our exhibit, trade fair visitors can immerse themselves in the world of the Industrial Metaverse and discover the engineering potential of this virtual environment. They will experience firsthand how the Industrial Metaverse is becoming a real competitive factor and offers companies tangible added value,” says Prof. Dr. Katharina Hölzle, Executive Director of the Fraunhofer IAO. From research with added value to application: “In addition to the technological possibilities, we are also showcasing several application scenarios for companies that directly support efficiency and knowledge transfer in product development or virtual collaboration,” says Dr. Steffen Braun, Deputy Director of the Fraunhofer IAO.

The Industrial Metaverse Up Close

What does it feel like when development processes no longer take place in two dimensions on a screen, but in an immersive space that enables immediate decisions? The Collaborative Powerwall, the centerpiece of the Fraunhofer exhibit, makes this immediately tangible and represents a new era of collaboration in virtual space. Thanks to real-time visualization and a tracking system, visitors can fully immerse themselves in the virtual environment. The technology enables a true-to-scale multi-viewer display of a three-dimensional object in virtual space with real-time interaction capabilities. This allows two people to simultaneously view and discuss the object or a prototype from their own perspectives. What makes this special: Each individual’s perspective is captured separately via a high-precision tracking system. This allows people to move independently of one another around the virtual object in the space, make changes in real time, and point out details or edit them together. Experts from Fraunhofer IAO will be on site at the booth to explain how this technology can be applied in practice and how it can realize its full potential.

Conversations with Virtual AI Avatars

Scientists aren’t the only ones available for discussion and questions. Visitors can also interact with photorealistic, voice-enabled AI avatars and explore the numerous applications of the industrial metaverse with virtual experts.

Joseph von Fraunhofer’s Digital Twin Invites You to Chat

A special highlight: Joseph von Fraunhofer’s digital twin is available for conversations. Trade show visitors can engage in dialogue with the namesake of the Fraunhofer Society and experience firsthand the possibilities avatars offer today—for example, in human-machine communication—and how they can be used, particularly in the metaverse, as a digital meeting space. Also waiting at the booth are the Added Value Avatars (AVA)—digital twins of real people who answer questions in real time through a combination of a large language model and a local knowledge system. For companies, they open up entirely new ways to make expertise available anytime, anywhere, and with consistent quality. Another element of the exhibit is Persona Check. Here, trade show attendees immerse themselves in AI-supported service development: Through interaction with AI personas, service ideas become tangible at an early stage, and the diverse requirements of various customer groups are taken into account from the very beginning when developing business ideas.

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