What Is a Digital Twin?

And why I expect Digital Twin technology to become widely adopted in the coming years

Fig 1: The Mirrored Spaces Model by Grieves [1]. [Image Source: Leon Eversberg]

Introduction

The term Digital Twin has gained a steady increase in interest over the last decade according to Google Trends, see Fig. 2.

Fig. 2: Google Trends plot for the search term “Digital Twin” over the last 10 years. [Image Source: Leon Eversberg]

One of the many reasons is the growth of key enabling technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) [2].

But, if you ask three people what the Digital Twin is, you will get four different answers. So, what is a Digital Twin?

In this article — which is the first part of a series — I cover the history of the Digital Twin term, its definition, and what has to change for the Digital Twin to become widely adopted.

What Is A Digital Twin?

The concept of the Digital Twin goes back to a presentation about Product Lifecycle Management from Dr. Michael Grieves in 2002 at the University of Michigan.

As shown in Fig 1. at the top of this article, the original concept consisted of a physical and a…