Generative AI-empowered Effective Physical-Virtual Synchronization in the Vehicular Metaverse
Minrui Xu, Dusit Tao Niyato, Hongliang Zhang, Jiawen Kang, Zehui Xiong, Shiwen Mao, Zhu Han · 2023
Metaverse seamlessly blends the physical world and virtual spaces through ubiquitous communication and computing equipment and infrastructure. In intelligent transportation systems, the vehicular Metaverse can provide a fully immersive and hyperreal travel experience (e.g., via augmented reality head-up displays, AR-HUDs) to drivers and passengers in autonomous vehicles (AVs) through roadside units (RSUs). However, providing real-time and immersive services requires effective physical-virtual synchronization between AVs and virtual simulators. This paper proposes a generative AI-empowered physical-virtual synchronization framework for the vehicular Metaverse. In physical-to-virtual synchronization, digital twin (DT) tasks generated by AVs are offloaded for execution in RSUs with future route generation. In virtual-to-physical synchronization, virtual simulators customize diverse and personalized AR content via generative AI models based on user preferences. Furthermore, we propose a multi-task enhanced auction-based mechanism to match and price AVs and virtual simulators for RSUs to provide real-time and effective services. Finally, property analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed mechanism is strategy-proof and adverse-selection free while increasing social surplus.