Related Papers
Research Square (Research Square)
Human Digital Twin: A Survey
2022 •
Aftab Ali
System research and information technologies
Digital twins: stages of concept development, areas of use, prospects
Nataliya Pankratova
The results of a review of the digital twin concept development, the areas of their use, and the prospects are highlighted. The history of the emergence and development of the digital twin concept, its definition, and its classification are given. The relevance of the technology under consideration is reflected. The purpose of this review is to provide the most complete, up-to-date information on the current state of the digital twin technology, its application in various fields of human activity, and further prospects for the development of the industry. An extensive bibliography on the topic is provided, which may be helpful for researchers and representatives of various industries.
Advances in intelligent systems and computing
Human Digital Twins and Cognitive Mimetic
2020 •
José Juan Cañas
philosophy & technology
Steering Representations-Towards a Critical Understanding of Digital Twins
2021 •
Vincent Blok
Digital Twins are conceptualised in the academic technical discourse as real-time realistic digital representations of physical entities. Originating from product engineering, the Digital Twin quickly advanced into other fields, including the life sciences and earth sciences. Digital Twins are seen by the tech sector as the new promising tool for efficiency and optimisation, while governmental agencies see it as a fruitful means for improving decision-making to meet sustainability goals. A striking example of the latter is the European Commission who wishes to delegate a significant role to Digital Twins in addressing climate change and supporting Green Deal policy. As Digital Twins give rise to high expectations, ambitions, and are being entrusted important societal roles, it is crucial to critically reflect on the nature of Digital Twins. In this article, we therefore philosophically reflect on Digital Twins by critically analysing dominant conceptualisations, the assumptions underlying them, and their normative implications. We dissect the concept and argue that a Digital Twin does not merely fulfil the role of being a representation, but is in fact a steering technique used to direct a physical entity towards certain goals by means of multiple representations. Currently, this steering seems mainly fuelled by a reductionist approach focused on efficiency and optimisation. However, this is not the only direction from which a Digital Twin can be thought and, consequently, designed and deployed. We therefore set an agenda based on a critical understanding of Digital Twins that helps to draw out their beneficial potential, while addressing their potential issues.
2020 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC)
System Thinking Approach for Digital Twin Analysis
2020 •
Andrea Bonci, Andrea Monteriù, Massimiliano Pirani
The importance of Digital Twins in research and industry is continuously increasing. Their applications, studied and implemented to date, confirm that they are a valuable tool in the evolution process from the traditional factory towards the Smart Factory, in the direction promoted by Industry 4.0. Different definitions of Digital Twin have been proposed by the scientific community with the aim of providing the one that could uniquely and consistently describe all the applications already featured. Such effort to create a unique definition of Digital Twin is very important since it may allow researchers to have guidelines for better understanding the different aspects of its main concepts. The present paper reports a systematic research on the state of the art, especially from recent literature, to show the main issues that could not allow univocal definition of Digital Twin. The aim of this work is to apply the principles of System Thinking to the definitions of Digital Twins already presented in literature. The result of this approach has made possible to represent the well-known concepts in a completely new conceptual framework allowing a potential strengthening of both the theoretical foundations and the tools with the aim to support the development of Digital Twins.
Systems
On the Notion of Digital Twins: A Modeling Perspective
Bedir Tekinerdogan
A digital twin is a digital replica of a physical entity that can be remotely controlled, which allows for sophisticated control for a variety of reasons. Digital twins are made possible using various technologies such as Internet of Things, sensor technology, artificial intelligence, data science, and machine learning. With this, it represents a new stage in smart systems engineering. Developing digital twin-based systems necessitates a holistic system engineering approach in which modeling is critical. Various studies have been published on the notion of digital twins and its applications in various domains, but a modeling perspective has not been explicitly considered. Hence, this article provides a novel insight on the notion of digital twins from a modeling perspective, describing the evolution of modeling in engineering and likewise providing a rational basis for digital twins as a next logical step in modeling. A metamodel is provided that integrates the key concepts of syste...
Advances in transdisciplinary engineering
Investigating Digital Twin: A Systematic Mapping Study
2022 •
Luka Guzina
Proceedings of the 25th International Academic Mindtrek Conference
HCI and Digital Twins – A Critical Look
Fanny Vainionpää
Life Sciences, Society and Policy
The use of digital twins in healthcare: socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks
2021 •
Eugen Octav Popa
Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system (human or non-human). A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they are perceived by stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed several important areas where the digital twin can produce socio-ethical value (e.g., prevention and treatment of disease, cost reduction, patient autonomy and freedom, equal treatment) but also several important areas of socio-ethical risks (e.g., privacy and property of data, disruption of existing societal structures, inequality and injustice). We conclude with a reflection on the employed analytical tool and suggestions for further research. The digital twin finally peaks The idea of replicating humans is anything but new. Descartes was perhaps the first to ponder philosophically on the idea of such "automata" (Descartes 1980: 32) and contemporary philosophy is in fact replete with twin-like creatures such as "doppelgangers" (Putnam 1996), "zombies" (Kirk 2008), and "swamp-men" (Donald 1987). Interesting and controversial as such thought experiments might be, they are nothing but philosophical devicesthey are sometimes called "intuition pumps" because they are devised to trigger and direct our intuition (Dennett 2013). But nowadays, such improbable twin versions of humans are approaching reality. Recent research on the topic of 'digital twins' has created the possibility of a dynamic (i.e., constantly updated) replica of the human body or at least some parts of the human body (
24th IEEE International Conference on Business Informatics
The Sociotechnical Digital Twin: On the Gap Between Social and Technical Feasibility
2022 •
Balbir Barn
The last five years has seen an exponential increase in interest around the notion of a digital twin. Multiple systematic reviews have established a base set of findings which are now broadly taken as assumptions in the field. The findings have outlined frameworks, integration patterns, distinctions between product and process oriented digital twins, simulation and the leveraging of artificial intelligence to support prediction and optimisation. As the use cases of digital twins have evolved from a predominance in manufacturing and into the sociotechnical domain to support the social world, a gap emerges between the social requirements and the technical machinery of digital twins. This gap is significant and worthy of exploration as it presents important challenges for digital twin research including use of sociotechnical design methods, problems arising from a so-called abstraction gap and various epistemological concerns. This paper proposes an analytical route to ameliorating the sociotechnical gap which is discussed within a future notion of an Environment Digital Twin.
