A digital twin is a digital replica of a physical entity. They can be used to replicate living things like humans, or non-living things like machines to optimize them.

Origin of Digital Twin Technology

The digital twin technology is credited to Dr. Michael Grieves, Chief Scientist of Advanced Manufacturing at the Florida Institute of Technology. He first introduced the concept in 2002.

Digital twins can be used to optimize and maintain machinery. One example of how this is is the operation of power generation equipment like turbines, jet engines, wind turbines, and locomotives. Digital twins can also be used to create EA blueprints for an organization by Enterprise Architects.

Another example is the use of 3D modeling to create digital mirrors for physical objects. Digital twins can be used to view the status of the actual physical object, providing a method of projecting physical objects into the digital world.

Motion Capture

Digital Twin Technology is similar to Motion Capture technology, or mo-cap for short. Mocap is used in entertainment, military, and sports industries, as well as in medical applications and for validation of computer vision and robotics.

Motion capture is most commonly associated with filmmaking and video game development. In this context, motion capture is the recording of human actors used to animate digital characters. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was the first feature film to make use of a system of real-time motion capture. This mo-cap system streamed the actions of actor Andy Serkis into the computer-generated skin of the character Gollum/Smeagol in real-time.

Mocap is different from digital twin technology because it is normally used to capture the movements of an actor, rather than the physical appearance. The data is mapped to a 3D model so that the model performs the same actions as they are being performed by the actor.

Industry Applications for Digital Twin Technology

Digital twin refers to a digital replica of potential and actual physical assets, processes, people, places, systems, and devices. By bridging the physical and the virtual world, data is streamed, allowing the virtual entity to exist simultaneously with the physical entity.

Examples of industry applications are:

Aircraft engines
Wind turbines
Large structures like offshore oil drilling, platforms, and vessels
Locomotives
Buildings
Utilities

The digital twin is meant to be a real-time and accurate copy of the physical object’s property and state. A benefit for engineers lies in real-world usage of products that are virtually being designed by the digital twin. Digital twin technology opens up for advanced ways of product and asset maintenance and management.