One of the quickest developing principles of Industry 4.0 is the digital twin technology as its applications are quite prominent across different industries.

One of the quickest developing principles of Industry 4.0 is the digital twin technology. Basically,  a  digital twin is a simulated copy of a real-world object operating in a simulated environment to measure its functionality and efficiency.

By using big data, IoT and AI frameworks, Digital Twins allows for in-depth studies. It is very helpful in finding major barriers, minimizing disruption and evaluating market opportunities, simulating potential outcomes and customizing development based on customer needs.

As per Global Logic reports, "According to Gartner, 13% of organizations implementing IoT projects already use digital twins, while 62% are either in the process of establishing digital twin use or plan to do so. The digital twin market is estimated to grow from $3.8 billion in 2019 to $35.8 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 37.8%, according to the latest report from MarketsandMarkets."

How is a Digital Twin formed?

Three key elements form a digital twin:

Historical data: Past output records of individual devices, aggregate procedures, and particular structures.

Current data: Concrete data from sensors of equipment, producing fields and equipment sources, and systems outputs in the distribution chain. Outputs from processes in other business segments, like customer support and buying, can also be used.

Future information: machine learning along with engineering inputs.

The benefits of digital twins include:

Product monitoring

During its complete process, a digital twin keeps monitoring the product. IoT sensors continue giving updates about the product's output from time – to – time. All the data is processed by Digital Twin, and the output is continually improved.

Predictiveness

Since the digital twin makes it possible to forecast the future state of related company assets by using various simulation tools, as well as to assess the impacts of any crucial matters to be tackled.

Better coordination between teams

Automation of the system and accessibility to information systems 24-hours allow technicians to concentrate more on teamwork, which contributes to increased efficiency and operational performance.

Digital Twin Use Cases are:

Smart Cities

Digital Twin can significantly boost cities' to be advanced ecologically, economically,  allowing users to build frameworks which direct their upcoming plans and help solve the complex problems that cities face. Digital Twin offers valuable real-time information in the event of any catastrophe such as earthquakes, including which areas are damaged, which hospitals may be affected, and thus helps urban planners to take decisive action.

Disaster Management

In recent times, climate change has had an impact on the world, but digital twins will continue to tackle this by building smarter infrastructure and services in an intelligent way, by designing incident response plans and by tracking climate crisis.

Healthcare

By reviewing the records and background of patient wellbeing, Digital Twin offers benefits in healthcare. It's convenient for physicians to give their clients appropriate medicine.

Automotive Field

Digital Twins are used to construct the digital prototype of a connected car in the automotive industry. The technology is used by automotive companies to design the ideal automotive vehicle before the development begins. They model and evaluate the manufacturing process and potential problems when the vehicle hits the streets.

Future Scenario

NEC states that, "Going forward digital twins will emerge as one of the key IT tools in many industries, especially in manufacturing but will also revolutionize product development and product testing in a wide variety of areas. Therefore, in the future almost every manufactured product could have its own digital twin as long as it is somehow generating data which can be captured and analyzed. This concept is known as a `digital triplet` and will represent the next stage of evolution of the digital twin. For example, instead of Boeing having just one digital twin of a new aircraft for development purposes, the company will have a unique digital model for every aircraft it makes. These individual models can be fed information from connected sensors in real time, and AI analysis can be applied to make real time predictions about the product life cycle, predictive maintenance, etc. Going forward human beings will also have their own digital triplets, which will collect real-time information from wearables and can contain a user`s unique genetic code and using this information in theory every person on the planet could receive extremely individualized yet cost effective medical treatment."