Digital Twin! Digital What Now?

You are sleeping deeply.

Suddenly you get a phone call from your colleague at work asking for help with a certain machine that is down.

You fire up the metaverse, load up the digital twin of the machine, figure out what’s wrong, and help your colleague fix it. Sounds really cool, ain’t it!?

This is not a fantasy, futuristic sci-fi novel scenario anymore.

We are definitely moving towards this and #DigitalTwin (or DT) is considered a huge enabler on that front these days. It is one of the niche technology terms being floated around.

So, what is this DT anyway?

A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical asset that is supposed to mimic the behavior and operation of its physical counterpart. That was a mouthful, alright!

Why is it required and how does it work in the first place?

Digital twins are considered to be physically accurate, #AI-enabled virtual representations of physical assets or environments. If these DTs are “in-theory” perfectly synchronized with the real world, it is very easy to simulate whatever needs to be done with the physical asset.

The sensors on the physical asset are used to capture the operational and environmental data on a continuous basis. This data is sent to a server or a bunch of them, usually in a cloud environment, to be processed and acted upon locally or remotely.

There are many challenges in designing a digital twin for even a simple physical asset, let alone complex ones. However, the multifold prospects this line of technology has in the real world is keeping computer engineers excited, especially the ones talking about #Metaverse.