Bridging Virtual and Physical Realms in Industrial Metaverses for Enhanced Process Control

Industrial environments increasingly demand solutions that enable safe, remote and collaborative interaction with physical processes, especially as production systems become more automated, interconnected, and geographically distributed. While digital twins have contributed significantly to monitoring and analysis tasks, they typically lack the immersive, multi-user and interactive capabilities required for advanced supervision and control scenarios. This paper proposes a comprehensive methodology for designing industrial metaverses that extend the concept of digital twins by enabling real-time bidirectional communication with physical automation systems while preserving industrial safety and cybersecurity requirements. The framework integrates a layered communication architecture, a secure command-validation gateway, and an immersive multi-user virtual environment capable of replicating and interacting with a real production process. The methodology is demonstrated through a full case study involving a pick-and-place cell connected to a real Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) via Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA), where a digital twin replaces the physical machine while maintaining identical communication, control logic and safety constraints. The results validate the feasibility of the approach and highlight its potential for remote supervision, operator training, collaborative interaction and experimentation without compromising plant integrity.