A expansão dos gêmeos digitais além da indústria pesada

The expansion of digital twins beyond heavy industry

Unlimited computing power, lots of data, and a deep need to optimize operations and outcomes are driving digital twins out of their traditional homes in manufacturing and heavy industry.

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While the idea of ​​using computers and simulations to model the physical world has been around for decades, digital twins, as they are more commonly known, are finding many use cases outside their traditional homes in the aerospace and manufacturing industries.

According to recent research from MarketsandMarkets, Digital Twin Market Size Global Forecast to 2026 , the use of digital twins is about to take off. Driven by easy access to nearly unlimited computing power and cloud data storage, the digital twin market, valued at $3.5 billion in 2020, is expected to reach $48 billion in the next four years. A huge CAGR of 58%.

Some analysts estimate that less than 5% of companies currently use digital twins.

“Increased demand for digital twins in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, change in maintenance and increasing adoption of digital twin solutions to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic are the main factors driving the growth of the digital twin market,” the report states.

But it's not just the healthcare sectors and big pharmaceutical companies that are interested. Billion-dollar global companies with hundreds of thousands of employees are using digital twins to model their organizations' daily workflows in an attempt to find blind spots and uncover insights that alert them to impending problems.

Connected car data and analytics pioneer Wejo, which has aggregated trillions of data points from millions of car-mounted Internet of Things (IoT) sensors around the world, is using digital twins to model entire countries to help planners urban environments, for example, simulating how vehicles would cross new roads and interact with infrastructure such as traffic lights.

“At Wejo, we believe digital twins will reshape everything from road safety to insurance, advertising, after-sales and more,” said CTO David Burns. “Through digital twins, we can see what a connected vehicle is doing a mile away and then alter and change the driver experience of an autonomous vehicle based on the information coming from the road.”

The Digital-Physical Interface

Another reason why digital twins are growing is that they can help managers improve processes, optimize operations, provide insights where none previously existed, accelerate innovation, while having the potential to reduce costs.

A company called Animated Insights is using digital twins to model skyscrapers like the Chrysler Building in New York City, for example. Built long before computers and digitized building plans were an idea, Animated Insights took four months to complete LIDAR scans of each floor and then infuse those maps with data from the building's management systems.

The resulting 3D model not only allows facility managers to see in real time how the building is functioning and interact with the building's systems to prevent small problems from becoming larger ones. They can also track assets, view real-time feeds from security cameras, monitor the traffic flow of people entering and leaving the building, as well as a host of other functions. The model is limited only by the systems it is linked to and the data that feeds it.

The rise of process twins

Digital twins are much more than just 3D models and high-definition graphics. Many digital twins are simply analytical models of real-world systems and processes that digest real-time data and provide reports designed to augment human decision-making.

Companies have access to more real-time data than ever today. Driven by a nearly unlimited supply of cloud computing cycles and storage, this data allows digital twins to model increasingly complex systems with greater accuracy. This doesn't exactly increase their usefulness over time, but rather the use cases they can be applied to. All of these data streams and analytics are giving rise to digital process twins that can be used to conduct real-time modeling and monitor things like supply chains and complex business processes and workflows.

The beauty of process twins is that they allow you to understand the complex dynamics that drive unexpected or unwanted behaviors, according to Ryan Raiker, senior director of Product Marketing at ABBYY. “As a result, digital twin technology will continue to gain importance in conjunction with the rise of process mining,” he said.

Home improvement giant Lowe's is developing digital twins to create smart stores. Its digital twin, which is still in development, will combine 3D store maps with e-commerce-style analytics. The resulting twins will be used to train AI models that will then be used to guide inventory robots through stores to help store employees keep items in stock and assist with other customer-facing tasks.

Other interesting use cases being explored by different companies are combining digital twins with mixed reality technologies like AR to offer users an enhanced view of reality. Healthcare providers are creating “digital clones” of people so that doctors can use intelligent systems to help them diagnose faster and treat their illnesses more effectively. The pharmaceutical industry is also exploring digital twins as a way to test new therapeutic approaches, such as the mRNA technologies underlying COVID-19 vaccines.

Of course, many of these ideas extend the traditional definition of digital twins into the realm of science fiction. For most of these cases, however, the technology exists to make this happen. The challenge in making them a reality is twofold: integrating disparate technology silos and providing the resulting models with the right data at the right times to create something that delivers real benefits to the individuals and organizations that need it. Otherwise, they are nothing more than pretty pictures.

Source: BairesDev

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