The components of a Digital Twin
Essentially, a digital twin is a dynamic digital profile of an object, system or process. Figure 1 is a diagram of a basic digital twin in context. It shows how sensors located on physical assets in the real-world measure behaviour and thus generate data are linked via communications infrastructure to the twin’s software. The software manipulates the data it receives into an up-to-date virtual model, ie a real-time representation of the monitored object (or process). A record of historical behaviour is formed by historical status profile and the designed capability, this is sometimes termed a digital through-life thread. Additionally, there may be a feedback link from the digital twin back to its physical counterpart via the control actions that can be implemented, as either a manual or an automated process.
A digital twin becomes powerful and valuable when it is used to make high-quality decisions resulting from the transformation of data into actionable insight. This is also known as feedback from the twin and it is made possible by using analysis and/or simulation models and techniques, which require human expertise to set up and monitor.
Where have twins been deployed before?
NASA made the first use of a digital twin, in 2002, by remotely monitoring and controlling the status of its spacecrafts’. However, in the years immediately after, no further use of twins was put to action. More recently there has been an increase in this area with factories using twinning processes to streamline their operations in semiconductor, automotive and aerospace production.