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.
for what
For the same reason that we already create digital twins on the computer of cancer patients. For example, to test different types of medication on the twins and check in this way, without risk, if they would cure the real patient. And that's how we save lives.
If a treatment works on my digital twin, will it work in real life?
We will be adding all the variables of his real body to his digital twin: temperature, blood pressure, vital signs... And we will see how he reacts to each medication before risking his life. It is the future of medicine and engineering: simulation facilitates decision-making.
Does every plane have its digital twin?
Do you remember the movie Apollo 13?
"Houston: we have a problem".
On Apollo 13, they suffered an explosion on board that they were soon charged with. They managed to save them thanks to a simulator of the ship in Houston into which they entered the data that the astronauts gave them and, thus, trying one solution and another, they managed to find the one that saved them without risking even more their lives.
Did they have digital twins then?
They were just simple simulators. The concept of digital lessons 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 table that we hit with a hammer: we can predict – with its digital twin – where, when and how it will break. And now think of the great dam of a reservoir in floods.
Warning of its breakdown would save lives.
It is already saving them, just as the digital twins of an airplane and the resistance of its wings save lives and, even more excitingly, the digital twins of patients who are tested for reactions to such a drug. like the treatments.
In the digital twin can you test everything in one system without risking anything?
And deduce other reactions and thus make better decisions. What happens if we fly an airplane aggressively? How long does it last? What happens if I increase a medication? After testing these 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 more and more precise in its answer; because more and more multiple sensors will go – think of the cameras that pick up every crack in the wall of a dam in real time – fine-tuning their accuracy. The digital twin thus evolves and improves the mere simulator.
And if the conditions are very tough?
Aviation engines reach very high temperatures when they fly in the desert. Before, regular maintenance was done every fortnight; today multiple sensors alert us if they need spare parts or repairs in real time.
The more flight hours, the more precision and safety in maintenance?
Also, imagine that it has 2,000 motors flying and their digital twins accumulating big data about their behavior: terabytes of data. Thanks to them you will spend and pollute less and save money.
Are digital twins profitable?
You must have previously invested, installed sensors and, with these, the updated data; the mathematical model and the computing power to analyze them, and you have to know the laws, in this case Newton's, that determine their reactions.
Will the twins predict the weather?
I'm from New Zealand and the weather forecast there is bad, but it's getting better every day, because it's a combination of satellite and observatory data; 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 single meteor - a hurricane, for example, of which we create a digital twin. This is how mathematics predicts the future.
How far will this capacity go?
Artificial intelligence is improving it, so you will see digital twins for everything and they will predict more and more accurately.
More than our own brains?
Our brains already help...
Aren't our brains already biomechanisms of anticipation?
But they find it difficult to pinpoint details, and digital twins are more efficient at this. They will make us smarter.
