The evolution of digital twins technology

It has become a clear fact that technology and its strange world is trying to recreate nature, the orbits of nature is gradually drowning into the cesspool brought about by tech and its waves. for one to bring the concept of impossibility to the stage in this age becomes something more of a ridicule, we are in synching  to the binary medium of life; a world where all that exists and will find expression in its shores is defined by zeros and ones.

A transformation has gripped our generation, prior to now scientists are held in awe of issues relating to the evolution of mankind, bringing into review theories of the big bang, the apes, the monkeys, the dinosaurs. But those were years before, right now the focal point of interest has drawn a different perspective wherein we bring evolution into context relating to the horizon of technology. One of the weirdest yet interesting of these evolutionary arms of tech is one we can term “the evolution of digital twins”.

Biological Twins concept

Prior to delving into the digital twin concept, I believe we should strike a chord in an effort to understand the idea of “twins” from a natural dimension. When we come across the word “twins” it brings to mind a word “replica” so in defining twins in nature, we can see that from two whole beings having unique yet same pattern, most times it is difficult to separate a replica from its original, same way it posses somewhat an uphill task to separate two kids drawn from a maternity room as twins. Marked by unrivalled resemblance, one can state the characteristics of the two just by studying a single and his guess would be closer to precision.

The digital twin concept

Meaning simplified; we say that a digital twin is a digital replication/replica of objects that are tangible/physical. Such objects can include machines, vehicles, buildings, computers, just any object that comes to your mind. It can also be a digital replica of a system or process like production process, marketing process, advertisement. Beyond the above stated one can decide to create a digital twin of a city, road, stadium, traffic and so on. The essence or the whole idea is to study the digital twin critically, make adjustments and modifications to it whilst not involving the physical twin so as to avoid resulting danger.

It is a virtual version of a physical object, place, process that serves as a monitoring or study specimen for the real time counterpart. Let’s just say it is a digital platform used for testing and making alterations to existing objects and systems without affecting them physically.

Let’s create a scenario where a nuclear weapon expert wants to check how increased temperature in a particular region can affect his nuclear reactor, one choice he has is to expose the nuclear reactor to such a high temperature in real time and observe the resultant effect; I tell you if things go wrong, we are looking at a catastrophe ranging from loss of life to loss of property and even a nuclear pollution liable to outlive many decades. But is that is a chance our responsible nuclear expert needs to take? Surely, on the contrary. Then how can he achieve such a feat without bringing existence in to danger? The evolution of digital technology has offered him a safe passage. All he needs to do is to create a digital model of his nuclear reactor and the region, then raise the temperature of the selected region in the digital program hence observing the outcome. He can make adjustments in the digital counterpart followed by monitoring the simulations, once he is certain that the system is devoid of danger in the digital world, then he can make such modifications in the physical nuclear reactor, checkmate and problem solved.

Another scene; a building engineer wants to know if he can erect a skyscraper on a particular foundation, chances are the nature of the soil in that area can’t accommodate such a huge building, wait even if the soil or and succeeds in holding the building today, what will be the effect of raising such high building in that particular landscape, will the building fall or sink after many years, will it disrupt the balance of the earth crust in that region, what will be the likely cost of erecting such building?. So many questions the  engineer needs to have a concise and certain answers to before commencing such  a huge and risky program. In order to get the answers he needs, he will create a digital replica of the building and also a replica of that soil or land form and run the simulations, if the building collapses in the simulation, then he can make the necessary adjustments in the digital twin or replica, he keeps making alterations in the digital twin until all conditions that will guarantee the safety of erecting such a structure has been reached, after which our engineer can think of starting to erect the structure on land following the guidelines of the digital twin. With this, he has saved himself from trial an error method which would have resulted in waste of time and even endangerment to lives and the earth crust.

Digital twin; its history

As the structure of Rome the great was not laid in a day, digital twin didn’t just surface from the blue and weave around the pillars of the twenty first century.

“Mirror Worlds”; a publication by David Gelemter in the year 1991 heralded the idea of digital twin but its first application is credited to Michal Grieves who happens to be of Florida Institute of Technology, he applied the concept in manufacturing hence introducing digital twin publicly in the year 2022.

Giving the concept a nomenclature was not that easy, it took on several names until the year 2010 when John Vickers of NASA called it the “Digital Twins” in his Roadmap Report.

Problems solved by digital twin/ the applications of digital twin

In the word today, so many applications and sectors have benefitted immensely from the evolution of digital twin technology and we will outline few out of the many beneficiaries.

1. Industrial and manufacturing processes: Digital twin tech has changed the face of industries relating to manufacturing, it has made manufacturing more efficient than it can ever be by reducing the cost of manufacturing and also the time; since these products to be manufactured are first mirrored by digital twin, it gives the manufacturer and overview of the resources, time, and conditions required for such product to be accomplished hence providing a guide, all steps along the way from the product design to the product finishing stage.
2. Automobiles Design: Improving the performance of vehicles have been achieved by the digital twin concept, with its aid the automobile sector were able to design virtual models of complex vehicles. By capturing the performances and behaviors of such vehicles in virtual simulations, automobile engineers have been able to make modifications which resulted to the design of super-power cars. Self customized vehicles have also been created; vehicles that perfectly fit into client’ description and specification; all these we can boldly say is due to the evolution of digital twins.
3. Marketing and retail planning: the prerequisite for profit making is customer satisfaction, the advent of digital twin has helped many retailers to create virtual twins of customers’ niche, monitor their behaviors with time, using the data gotten the retailers model products as such.
4. Healthcare management: same way products are designed in digital twins, patients can also be monitored extensively making use of digital twins, using digital twins sensor-generated data, health indicators of patients can be tracked and the appropriate maintenance strategy of patients with different health conditions is employed without guessing.
5. Engineering constructions and designs: Before the physical design of heavy duty factory machines, digital twin comes into play. Such machines are first designed in the digital twin platform and modifications made, after which the physical process can then begin. Civil Engineers who construct roads and buildings make use of Digital twins and augmented reality in showing 3D and 4D in real time. Making such simulations with digital twin and testing them in its platform helps save unimaginable cost for design engineers, not to forget the high precision that is achieved.

In summary, the evolution of this great technology has helped to enhance precision, avert dangers that would have resulted if certain operations were embarked upon without simulations, save costs, save time and lives have been spared ; thanks to the evolution of digital twins tech.

The building process of digital twins

Building a digital twin is far from being simple but once they are accomplished, the potentials they offer are quite unlimited.  They are built by gathering all the information about really anything that exists, anything you want to make a copy of and then recreating it in the digital space. Every individual component, the ways these components interact and even the environment they exist in are digitally replicated, the digital twin then uses Artificial Intelligence to simulate and demonstrate the effects that changes in design, process time and conditions would have without having to subject the real world object to those changes. In digital twin, information from the real world is continuously gathered throughout development, production and operation and fed to the digital twin model, with that constant flow of data; changes made in the real world are reflected in the digital twin allowing it to evolve as the project does.

Likely future of digital twin

Most people inquire on what the future might hold for this technology. In as much as the future is forked but one can predict that digital twins will turn out to be one of the most important technological tools of development in industries. It is not wrong to say that there is likelihood that in the future, almost all products will have its digital twin so long such products can generate analyzable data. The future might see an automobile industry having a digital twin for all automobiles it produces. Well since human beings also collect data, it becomes true to say that the future might see human beings having digital twins which will be used to collect real time information of human beings hence creating services that suit them uniquely.

It becomes irresponsible for us to state for sure what will happen to digital twins as time ticks down to days and days to months and years but it becomes necessary for us to study this disruptive technology critically, see its faults and make sure that we don’t end up building an enemy we think we are fighting.

Left for me, I’m a technology optimist, I believe in digital twins and all the wonders it will bring about in this generation and beyond; but that’s about me, what’s your take in the concept of digital twins technology?

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