What is a digital twin?
It is a computational model of a system, which can be a living organism or a machine. Right now, we could create a digital twin of you.
So that?
For the same reason we already created computer-based digital twins of cancer patients. For example, to test different types of medication on the twins and thus check, without risk, if they would cure the real patient. And this is how we save lives.
If a treatment works on my digital twin, will it work in reality?
We will add all the variables of your real body to your digital twin: temperature, blood pressure, vital indicators… And we will see how you react to each medication before risking your life. It is the future of medicine and engineering: simulation facilitates decision making.
Does each plane have its digital twin?
Remember the movie Apollo 13?
“Houston, we have a problem”.
On Apollo 13, they suffered an explosion on board that almost killed them. Well, they managed to save them thanks to a ship simulator in Houston in which they entered the data given to them by the astronauts and, thus, trying one solution and another on it, they managed to find the one that saved them without risking their lives even more.
Did they already have digital twins then?
They were just mere simulators. The concept of digital twins was coined years later, in 2010; because digital twins are no longer simple simulators, they also evolve and improve by incorporating more data from many more systems.
To predict, for example, the weather?
And climate change. And today, with extreme precision, the behavior of materials. Think of a board that we hit with a hammer: we can predict – with its digital twin – where, when and how it will break. And now think about the large dam of a reservoir in floods.
Reporting its breakage would save lives.
It is already saving them, as they are also saved by the digital twins of an airplane, and those of the resistance of its wings and, more excitingly, they are saved by the digital twins of patients in whom the reactions to a medication and treatments are being tested.
In the digital twin, can everything be tested in a system without risking anything?
And deduce other reactions and thus make better decisions. What happens if we fly a plane aggressively? How long does it last? What happens if I increase a medication? By testing those reactions in the digital twin, you decide better without risk.
Is the digital twin learning?
It will follow Newton’s laws and those that are fulfilled in each case, and will be increasingly more precise in its response; because more and more multiple sensors will be present – ??think of the cameras that capture each crack in the wall of a dam in real time – refining their precision. The digital twin evolves and thus improves the mere simulator.
What if the conditions are very harsh?
Aviation engines reach very high temperatures when flying in the desert. Before, regular maintenance was done every 15 days; Today multiple sensors tell us if they need spare parts or repairs in real time.
The more flight hours, the more precision and safety in maintenance?
Furthermore, imagine you have 2,000 engines flying and your digital twins accumulating big data about their behavior: terabytes of data. With them you will spend and pollute less and save money.
Are digital twins profitable?
You must first have invested, installed sensors and, with them, updated data; the mathematical model and the computing power to analyze them, and you must know the laws, in this case Newton’s, that determine their reactions.
Will the twins predict the weather?
I am New Zealand and the weather prediction there is bad, but it improves every day, because it is a combination of data from satellites and observatories; of the model and physical laws. It is a complex system.
But not chaotic: one day it will be predicted.
It is easier to predict a singular meteor: a hurricane, for example, of which we create a digital twin. This is how mathematics predicts the future.
How far will that capacity go?
Artificial intelligence improves it, so you will see digital twins for everything and they will predict more and more accurately.
More than our own brain?
They already help our brains…
Aren’t our brains already biomechanisms of anticipation?
But it is difficult for them to specify details, and digital twins are more efficient in that. They will make us smarter.
