Digital Twin technology is an emerging concept that has become the centre of attention for industry and, in more recent years, academia. The advancements in industry 4.0 concepts have facilitated its growth, particularly in the manufacturing industry. The Digital Twin is defined extensively but is best described as the effortless integration of data between a physical and virtual machine in either direction. The challenges, applications, and enabling technologies for Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT) and Digital Twins are presented. A review of publications relating to Digital Twins is performed, producing a categorical review of recent papers. The review has categorised them by research areas: manufacturing, healthcare and smart cities, discussing a range of papers that reflect these areas and the current state of research. The paper provides an assessment of the enabling technologies, challenges and open research for Digital Twins.

Digital Twin: Enabling Technologies, Challenges and Open Research

Review of digital twin about concepts, technologies, and industrial applications

With the rapid advancement of cyber-physical systems, Digital Twin (DT) is gaining ever-increasing attention owing to its great capabilities to realize Industry 4.0. Enterprises from different fields are taking advantage of its ability to simulate real-time working conditions and perform intelligent decision-making, where a cost-effective solution can be readily delivered to meet individual stakeholder demands. As a hot topic, many approaches have been designed and implemented to date. However, most approaches today lack a comprehensive review to examine DT benefits by considering both engineering product lifecycle management and business innovation as a whole. To fill this gap, this work conducts a state-of-the art survey of DT by selecting 123 representative items together with 22 supplementary works to address those two perspectives, while considering technical aspects as a fundamental. The systematic review further identifies eight future perspectives for DT, including modular DT, modeling consistency and accuracy, incorporation of Big Data analytics in DT models, DT simulation improvements, VR integration into DT, expansion of DT domains, efficient mapping of cyber-physical data and cloud/edge computing integration. This work sets out to be a guide to the status of DT development and application in today’s academic and industrial environment.

A state-of-the-art survey of Digital Twin: techniques, engineering product lifecycle management and business innovation perspectives

As the next-generation manufacturing system, intelligent manufacturing enables better quality, higher productivity, lower cost, and increased manufacturing flexibility. The concept of sustainability is receiving increasing attention, and sustainable manufacturing is evolving. The digital twin is an emerging technology used in intelligent manufacturing that can grasp the state of intelligent manufacturing systems in real-time and predict system failures. Sustainable intelligent manufacturing based on a digital twin has advantages in practical applications. To fully understand the intelligent manufacturing that provides the digital twin, this study reviews both technologies and discusses the sustainability of intelligent manufacturing. Firstly, the relevant content of intelligent manufacturing, including intelligent manufacturing equipment, systems, and services, is analyzed. In addition, the sustainability of intelligent manufacturing is discussed. Subsequently, a digital twin and its application are introduced along with the development of intelligent manufacturing based on the digital twin technology. Finally, combined with the current status, the future development direction of intelligent manufacturing is presented.

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Digital twin-based sustainable intelligent manufacturing: a review

Redesigning America’s community colleges (RACC), written by Thomas R. Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins, is certain to become a top selection on the reading list of many community col...

Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success

https://findresearcher.sdu.dk:8443/ws/files/169020434/Bilberg_Malik_Digital_Twins_CIRP_Annals.pdf

Digital twin driven human–robot collaborative assembly

https://findresearcher.sdu.dk:8443/ws/files/151951872/Digital_twins_of_human_robot_collaboration_in_a_production_setting.pdf

Digital twins of human robot collaboration in a production setting

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) can expand the level of automation in areas that have conventionally been difficult to automate such as assembly. However, the need of adaptability and the dynamics of human presence are keeping the full potential of human-robot collaborative systems difficult to achieve. This paper explores the opportunities of using a digital twin to address the complexity of collaborative production systems through an industrial case and a demonstrator. A digital twin, as a virtual counterpart of a physical human-robot assembly system, is built as a ‘front-runner’ for validation and control throughout its design, build and operation. The forms of digital twins along system's life cycle, its building blocks and the potential advantages are presented and discussed. Recommendations for future research and practice in the use of digital twins in the field of cobotics are given.

Digital twins for collaborative robots: A case study in human-robot interaction

Over the past years, collaborative robots have been introduced as a new generation of industrial robotics working alongside humans to share the workload. These robots have the potential to enable human–robot collaboration (HRC) for flexible automation. However, the deployment of these robots in industrial environments, particularly in assembly, still comprises several challenges, of which one is skills-based tasks distribution between humans and robots. With ever-decreasing product life cycles and high-mix low volume production, the skills-based task distribution is to become a frequent activity. This paper aims to present a methodology for tasks distribution between human and robot in assembly work by complexity-based tasks classification.,The assessment method of assembly tasks is based on the physical features of the components and associated task description. The attributes that can influence assembly complexity for automation are presented. Physical experimentation with a collaborative robot and work with several industrial cases helped to formulate the presented method.,The method will differentiate the tasks with higher complexity of handling, mounting, human safety and part feeding from low-complexity tasks, thereby simplifying collaborative automation in HRC scenario. Such structured method for tasks distribution in HRC can significantly reduce deployment and changeover times.,Assembly attributes affecting HRC automation are identified. The methodology is presented for evaluating tasks for assigning to the robot and creating a work–load balance forming a human–robot work team. Finally, an assessment tool for simplified industrial deployment.

Complexity-based task allocation in human-robot collaborative assembly

Over the past years, the concept of human-machine interaction has received ample attention to achieve hybrid automation in manufacturing. A form of hybrid automation is taking benefit from the syne...

/pdf/virtual-reality-in-manufacturing-immersive-and-collaborative-35wb5bqefj.pdf

Ali Ahmad Malik

Papers

Digital twin driven human–robot collaborative assembly

Digital twins of human robot collaboration in a production setting

Digital twins for collaborative robots: A case study in human-robot interaction

Complexity-based task allocation in human-robot collaborative assembly

Virtual reality in manufacturing: immersive and collaborative artificial-reality in design of human-robot workspace