Applications of Digital Twins

We are in the early development stages of the Digital Industrial Era where the Digital Twin as yet is in it?s infancy. Despite this, we can catch sight of tremendous transformations that lie ahead of us. These Digital Twins epitomize asset ‘memories’ and even ‘group consciousness as they turn out to be the ‘living models of physical entities. We are witnessing the major applications of Digital Twins in the following sectors:

1. Manufacturing:

Not only the emergence of Digital Twins helps us manufacture high-grade products. But also we can salvage money and time both, which would otherwise be wasted on the production. It facilitates these firms to test new designs expeditiously. Talking about Virtualised Testing of a new supply chain, its a breeze, whereas testing the physical equivalent involves shutting down production, losing profits, which on the other hand can be like opening a Pandora’s box. Since digital twins can give a real-time view of what’s happening with equipment or other physical assets, they have been very helpful in manufacturing.

2. Automotive:

As automobiles, especially cars, become progressively integrated with IoT and digital technology, the ability to replicate every detail becomes increasingly indispensable. With the help of digital twins, it has become a piece of cake for engineers to predict the performance of the machines. We can construct a digital twin of all sorts of autonomous vehicles and track the vehicle from the day of its creation to the day it goes to the junkyard. Engineers can test new safety features in the digital world, without any need for the new physical vehicle to test changes. For a similar reason, smart car producers are testing their self-driving AI in digital environment too.

3. Healthcare:

A digital twin can help virtualize a hospital system to create a safe environment and test the impact of potential changes on the performance of the system. Furthermore, Digital Twins in the healthcare sector can identify faults with the various equipment (which is often very expensive and needs to operate at optimum levels) involved in various medical fields. Not just that but digital twin has helped doctors to carry out difficult surgeries. Take an example of cardiologists, they used digital twins of the patient’s heart to precisely determine the positioning of leads that would work best on this specific patient that too before surgery decreasing the risk of failure.

4. Retail:

The implementation of this concept of a Digital Twin plays a key role in augmenting the retail customer experience by manufacturing a simulation that could accurately represent how a specific model of a product takes place in an individual’s life. Not only this but also it lets you test if there is any potential in a new design of the product to cut back expenses without having to make large scale physical changes to your entire product range which can reduce the market price of the product. Having an exact digital copy of your physical asset can lead to trendsetting innovations. Once the innovation works well for digital model, one can start investing in physical assets.

5. Smart Cities:

Cities have numerous moving and interconnected building blocks. With a well suited advanced model, civil engineers, governments and other related companies can test new solutions in the best possible way. This tool can prove highly advantageous for analyzing the different forms of transport and pedestrian movement patterns and for sound planning to ensure that their requirements are met. When prepared with Machine Learning, this model can test possible solutions to problems like traffic management in no time. This model would be beneficial in yet another troublesome situations. Such as, in the case of a fire emergency, firefighters can have access to the 3D model of the building. With the help of Augmented Reality and AI, firefighters could know where people are and how to predict fire’s behavior.

Have you ever crafted a machine? If so, envision the iterative process it took to achieve flawless functionality. We understand that the journey likely involved numerous attempts, a common challenge faced not only by you but by every manufacturer. Defects in specific fragments can lead to nonfunctionality, prompting dismantling, identification of the faulty part, and starting anew.

Ever wished you could predict a machine’s performance before assembly? Imagine simulating it on your desktop, replicating real-world behavior from micro-atomic to macro-geometric levels. This possibility is realized through a “Digital Twin.” The future of industrial services revolves around accurately predicting physical assets through their Digital Twins.