A unified digital twin approach incorporating virtual, physical, and prescriptive analytical components to support adaptive real-time decision-making

• Published in: Computers & industrial engineering 2024-07, Vol.193, p.110241, Article 110241
• Main Authors: Walton, Ryan B., Ciarallo, Frank W., Champagne, Lance E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Augmented/virtual reality; Digital twin; Real-time decision-making; Simulation
• ISSN: 0360-8352
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cie.2024.110241

Based on an overview of the historical and rapidly expanding literature on digital twins, this paper identifies fundamental capabilities that outline a general and adaptable twin that supports system development, real-time interactions, prescribing courses of action, and actualizing them. We relate these capabilities to business analytics concepts and decision-making processes geared toward rapid adaptation to changing situations. This leads to a general digital twin architecture supporting a system throughout its lifecycle implemented with components including Internet of Things (IoT) devices, a virtual reality environment, network communications, and an analytic simulation. The success of this architecture revolves around an authoritative data source, the Highly Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE). We demonstrate the architecture and capabilities through a transporter system example. This demonstration highlights important timing and synchronization questions critical to fulfilling the twin’s fundamental role of reacting to evolving real-world conditions. It identifies the importance of lags in decisions, relates it to prescriptive response time and the rate of evolution of the underlying system, and quantifies this impact with new metrics of effectiveness lag and relevancy decay. •Establishes digital twin capabilities (describe, predict, prescribe, and actualize).•Recommends digital twin components (observe, orient, simulate, decide, and act).•Develops digital twin architecture utilizing virtual reality and analytic simulation.•Introduces the Highly Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE) for authoritative data.•Identifies decision lag via use case when prescribing courses of action in real-time.