Digital Twins
While reading industry breaking news in the engineering realm, I stumbled upon mentions of a ‘Digital Twin’, and I quickly fell into a wormhole of curiosity (and admittedly confusion). Currently, a team of researchers in the EU are working on creating a Digital Twin of Earth geared towards illustrating outcomes of environmental conditions - global warming. Before explaining why this is incredibly cool, here is some background on the subject…
Digital Twin is defined as a digital replica of potential and actual physical assets, processes, people, places, systems and devices that can be used for various purposes. This term was coined by Michael Grieves during a speech about improving the efficiency of machines based upon future outcomes.
A Digital Twin encapsulates the idea that we are switching work from the physical world to a virtual one. We are replacing expensive physical time, energy, and material with significantly cheaper data.
The Digital Twin is the concept driver behind the fourth industrial revolution. It moves us from a functional-centric approach to a product-centric one. It integrates manufacturing as a critical aspect of product creation, to avoid the typical issue that manufacturing is an after-thought once a product has come into fruition.
The Digital Twin model consists of three elements: a physical space and products that we have historically worked with; the new virtual, digital space and products; and, the connection between the physical and virtual. This is know as the “Digital Thread.”
To better understand, here is a simplified process as to how to create a digital twin;:
Virtual counter-parts of physical assets are created as digitalized duplicates via sensors
Data is collected and synthesized from many sources like physical & operational data
This data is combined with AI algorithms to create a physics-based virtual model
The flow of data allows for analysis as to how to optimize an outcome
Coming full circle, the creation of a Digital Twin of Earth, completely shatters any non-believers of climate change, will simultaneously showing the world not what may happen, but what will happen. Because knowledge is power, we must take the responsibility of our growing relationship with single-use consumerism, and kick Mr. Single-Use to the curb. Thinking selfishly, I would love to have a digital twin of myself, to see the long term outcomes of my everyday decisions; diet, exercise, indulgences, mental health and so on. So, if you could have a digital twin, what variables would you change to see your future? Tell me in the Comments section below!