Life in 3D!

Preparing for the rise of Digital Twin technology

Digital Twins became a more viable emerging technology this year, as more industry sectors grasp the benefits beyond a ‘Plant and Process’ use case. Spatial visualisation technology in combination with more readily available data sources, make Twining our real-world environments and processes a viable option. From a services provider perspective, the value and purpose of a Digital Twins, rests in enabling regular humans; who aren’t technical specialists or data scientists. To model strategies and execute data-driven decisions, via Digital Twin scenario modeling. This is where our Datacom Foundry team can help.

The power of a Digital Twin is its ability to translate or communicate complex information via data visualization, delivered through a context rich interface. An interface that enables real-time monitoring or scenario-modelling of a core system, environment or machine process.

When compared to standard data visualisation offerings a Digital Twin delivers significant differences. Achieved through the addition of spatial layouts and interactions. Meaning, traditional data flows from sensor outputs and APIs can be seen in context with 3D models and geospatial information such as captured through LIDAR scans.

The super power of a Twin is the added dimension of a predictive analytics layer, with scenario modelling. This modeling ability lets the Digital Twin take on the risky impacts, without affecting any real-world systems. It's easy to see these benefits when you apply them to city planning, medical systems or vehicle designs.

But, before we all jump in and build a Twin. I’ve laid out a little information about where Digital Twins are emerging from in the vast landscape of new technologies and some basic rules of thumb, on what they are and what they aren’t.

Shifting to an Industry 4.0 World

Globally, we are moving into the fourth industrial revolution. Or in geek speak Industry 4.0. Over the next 20 years we’ll see an accelerated change from discrete digital tool use, into an era of human-machine augmentation. Technologies that we see as separated right now will form integrated systems that augment human intelligence with the quick fire compute power of our digital and technological networks.

Landscape Emerging Technology

When attempting to future forecast through the wealth of emerging technologies. I’m guided by what platforms and resources we have now; such as big data and cloud computing. The capabilities of these foundational technologies indicate the building blocks upon which the new stuff stands. For example, we wouldn’t have the acceleration in Artificial Intelligence unless we already had the power of cloud computing, cloud SAAS offerings and large scale datasets. Which were themselves made scalable by the birth of the internet.

How Digital Twins Fit

Digital Twins pop into the Emerging tech landscape in a few ways, without really owning their own space yet. Its easy to see how IoT driven Twins fit within a domestic setting, with the growth of smart systems. Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa, create mini-twins of our daily routines. Powered by AI, smart-devices and sensors, AI tools such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) work together to augment our intelligence, seen when we ask Alexa a question or for Google switch on the TV.

At an industry scale, Digital Twins powered by Machine Learning (ML) will have a big impact, helping to solve the constant issue of generating useful, categorised, machine consumable data-sets, which a ‘live’ data drive Digital Twin will require.

However, I see the true scalable potential of Digital Twins occurring within the ‘Spatial computing’ revolution. Which we’ve been hearing more about recently via the tag line of ‘Metaverse’. But I’ll leave the Metaverse for another post.

What is and isn’t a Digital Twin?

From a technology perspective a digital twin is a virtual representation of the real world, including physical objects, processes, relationships, and behaviours. It is a living data driven entity, one that can be used as a strategic tool and which you can query to plot outcomes for specific real-world scenarios.

What is not — is a simulation, model or visualization of a real world environment or object. However, these are all building blocks of a digital twin and provide a place to start. It’s the link with live data and queryable scenarios that make a true Digital Twin.

Building Blocks

The building blocks of a Digital Twin are relatively simple, you’ll need a; Physical Asset, Data Source, Visualization, and User Interface. Together these combine to create your Digital Twin. Which can be delivered via a range of software platforms and accessed via interfaces that range from Mixed Reality or a Web Browser, depending on the needs to your audience.

• Physical Asset: You start with a physical asset, such as a building.
• Data Source: You will also need a source of data that tells you something about the function of that asset. The most benefit comes from a live source of data such as from a IoT sensor array or API. You’ll then plug that data into a visualisation of your asset.
• Visualization: Take a 3D model, such as a building into an visualisation engine and hook up your data source. An engine is something like Unreal Engine or Unity 3D. But there are many engines that are custom built for Digital Twins like Beca’s FACILTYTwin or NextSpace’s Bruce.
  By bringing everything together into an visualisation engine you can combing 3D models, and data inputs to create a visualisation that can be explored in numerous ways.
• Interface: To engage with the data and visualisation in a human friendly form, there are a number of user interface experiences. Say we have a 3D visualisation of a building. It’s showing live data of its internal systems that change over time. A useful interface in this case would be a 3D viewer like mixed (XR) or virtual reality (VR). Alternatively if you want to share a view at scale, for a large virtual group, then a 3D accelerated option delivered via a web browser may be more fitting.

Spectrum of Digital Twins

The final thing I’d like to share about Digital Twins is that they come in many shapes and sizes. Best to think of them as existing along a spectrum. Which is useful when considering their benefits in your industry sector. A Digital Twin offering can operate at a ‘Systems’ level or act in a more discrete fashion at a ‘Functions’ level. The type of Twin you want is also dependent on what building blocks you have available e.g. data sets, APIs or 3D Models. The key though is to start with the question “what do I want to learn?” from this type of sophisticated visualisation, or “What problem can I model to get insight on a solution”.