“Digital twin” is a regularly encountered term in the tech industry nowadays. Companies are using digital twins—virtual representations of real-life physical objects and processes—to study everything from equipment maintenance to the human body. However, the concept of a digital twin can be a complicated idea for those who are outside of the industry to understand.
Despite the potentially complex definition, digital twins are becoming common, essential tools in today’s world, and everyone should have a basic understanding of how the concept can be applied. Below, 13 Forbes Technology Council members offer examples of digital twins to show how industries are currently leveraging them as well as their potential impact on future developments.
Members of Forbes Technology Council share current and potential uses of digital twin technology.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Real-Time Sharing Of Information
Digital twins represent the physical world in a format that computers can understand and use to provide new functionalities. For example, the map in your GPS system is a digital twin of the world that the GPS system uses to provide you with real-time directions to your destination. You could use a paper map, but you would have to stop from time to time to understand where you are and update the directions. - Gerald Rousselle, One Concern
2. Improving Vehicle Safety
It’s expensive to use crash test dummies and physically destroy cars to get life-saving data about how a vehicle will perform in life-or-death situations. A digital twin collects data from sensors installed in a car. Gathered over time, this data can be used in countless cost-effective crash test simulations. The results of these simulations improve the safety of the real-life car to save lives. - Stefan Kalb, Shelf Engine
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3. Calculating Product Performance Measures
If you accept that a digital twin is a (potentially) comprehensive digital equivalent of some product or process in the physical world, the value is quite profound. With a digital twin of a product, an OEM can understand how it is being used, how it is performing, when it may break down and whether or not it is low on supplies. This can all lead to a better experience for the end customer. - Michael Campbell, PTC
4. Removing Risks From Experimentation
In life sciences, digital twin technology is a game-changer. It eliminates the need to take equipment or processes represented by the digital twin offline, enabling multiple experiments; it allows for what-if analyses; and it optimizes defined parameters/outputs with a replica interface that responds to human and environmental input virtually as if it was the physical twin. All this significantly de-risks analysis by making it unnecessary to use the physical twin. - Kathleen Brunner, Acumen Analytics Inc
5. Supporting Sustainable Clothing Practices
A good example of a potential digital twin would be a “digital passport” for every manufactured piece of clothing. It could contain information such as product attributes, the source(s) of the raw materials, the factory where it was produced and even previous ownership. Consumers who care about sustainable practices would find this information useful. - Julia Dietmar, Vue.ai
6. Providing Needed Input For Databases
Lack of data is the main reason why machine learning and digitalization projects fail. Data starvation puts multimillion-dollar investments into these projects at risk. Hardware is taking up a bigger role in analytics, as software needs sensors to gain access to the real world. The availability of the physical world to the database is the key to providing enough data. Digital twins serve as such an interface. - Vitaly Kleban, Everynet
7. Preventing Sports Injuries And Enhancing Athletes’ Performance
The NFL has a digital twin for every single player. With field cameras and sensors, they can see and re-create every move and play, including speed and body posture. This level of sophistication has tremendous potential for injury prevention as well as implications for improved game performance. It’s easy to see how this type of information might be useful for more than just elite athletes. - Laurie McGraw, AMA
8. Simulating Complex Manufacturing Scenarios
A great example of a digital twin is a precise, virtual representation of a production supply chain. The digital twin uses advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms to simulate complex what-if scenarios, all without having to do a real run in production. This allows manufacturers to utilize resources more accurately and increase product quality. - Eugene Khazin, Prime TSR
9. Improving Software Products
One way a digital twin can be used is to leverage actual customer usage data to improve enterprise software products. After collecting data such as whether customers use a particular feature, how they decide to receive notifications or how they collaborate with other users while using a product, developers can create a digital twin of the customer experience whereby AI can determine the fastest way to solve issues. - Vince Padua, Axway
10. Providing Personal Assistance
What’s a digital twin? Almost everyone on the planet already has a digital twin: their smartphone! When I walk into my favorite coffee joint, I get an immediate phone notification—“Swipe to pay”—which means they know I have arrived. When I’m driving down the highway and there’s a huge traffic jam ahead, I get rerouted and save countless minutes of time. My phone is actually acting as a personal digital twin. - Kerrie Hoffman, Get Digital Velocity; and FocalPoint Business Coaching, a Hoffman Advantage Company
11. Creating Valuable Digital Assets
There is a lot of hype around crypto and nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. NFTs are a way of digitally representing a physical asset such as a picture, a video or even a music clip. Once a physical object is mapped into an NFT, it is given a unique digital identity within a blockchain, and it lives forever. The asset can be assigned a monetary value and become a valuable collectible. - Ghufran Shah, Metsi Technologies Ltd
12. Optimizing Traffic Flows
Digital twinning has tremendous applications in transportation. With smart vehicles and smart cities, nuanced and even real-time adjustments to traffic lights are possible. Optimizing traffic flows will take time and could potentially be dangerous in the real world. By creating a digital twin of cars and lights, we can test, optimize and later implement the technology much more safely. - Joaquin Lippincott, Metal Toad
13. Facilitating Hybrid Teaching Methods
Since the pandemic, many universities have equipped their classrooms with virtual conferencing technology to facilitate hybrid teaching, in which both in-person and virtual courses are delivered. This virtual conferencing technology is like a digital twin that enables both face-to-face and digital/virtual course deliveries. It can also be used to record asynchronous digital course content. - Zheng Fan, University of Miami Herbert Business School
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