Is the Digital Twin of the Customer Emergent?

 At an engineering conference I talked about digital twins of Jet Engines useful as well for flesh and blood consumers. Intrigued.

Brought to my attention in Gartner, see much more at the ilnk

A Digital Twin of the Customer Could Transform Your Supply Chain Digitalization Strategy  .... 

By Beth Coppinger Gartner | June 16, 2023 |

Supply ChainBeyond Supply ChainSupply Chain Strategy, Leadership And Governance

One of the best things about my job is that I get to talk to leaders across industries about how they leverage their supply chains to drive growth with customers. Their stories offer inspiring lessons about the path forward,  especially in the area of emerging technologies. Digital twin of the customer (DToC) is one of those technologies that leading companies are piloting. Gartner classifies DToC as an emerging technology system that is “transformational,” meaning it has the potential to establish new ways of doing business within and across industries, resulting in major shifts in industry dynamics. ... ' 

Exploring Definition of Digital Twins in GPT

 Been exploring how well GPT defines technical terms that I know by experience.   Here is an example: Digital Twins.   In particular its relationship to digital simulation approaches, which I have done in industry for a long time.    Here is an example using ChatGPT, at the first level of definition.  How good is this for the beginner in distinguishing it from simple simulation?   Also taking this further including 'Tell me more' and 'simplify' style prompts.  Reasonable?

 Digital Twin: (Initial Definition)

    Digital twins are virtual representations of physical systems or processes that are designed to simulate and analyze their behavior in real-time. These virtual models are created by combining data from various sources, including sensors, IoT devices, and other sources, to create a real-time representation of the physical system.

Digital twins can be used in a wide range of applications, including manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation. For example, in manufacturing, digital twins can be used to simulate production processes and optimize the manufacturing process, reducing costs and improving quality. In healthcare, digital twins can be used to simulate and analyze patient data to improve diagnosis and treatment, while in transportation, digital twins can be used to optimize traffic flow and reduce congestion.

Digital twins are often used in conjunction with machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to provide predictive insights and optimize performance. By using real-time data from the physical system, digital twins can predict and respond to changes in the environment or the system itself, enabling proactive maintenance, reducing downtime, and improving performance.

Overall, digital twins represent an exciting new technology that has the potential to transform a wide range of industries by enabling real-time simulation, analysis, and optimization of complex physical systems.  STOP    

Digital Twin for Intense Weather

Interesting and clever approach, if there is enough detail in the model being used.  How much is required for the purpose? 

ACM TECHNEWS

Digital Twin for Intense Weather Gives Scientists 'Control Loop'

By ZDNet, February 10, 2023

The work allows for a digital twin of the real world, allowing scientists to make predictions and see the effects of interventions in a kind of control loop.

Computer maker Cerebras used its AI computer on a non-AI problem: simulating "buoyancy-driven Navier-Stokes flows" that capture dynamics of many systems in nature and the built environment.

Credit Cerebras/DoE NETL 2023

Scientists at artificial intelligence computing developer Cerebras and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) said they can model extreme weather by accelerating field equations.

Said Cerebras' Andrew Feldman, "This is a real-time simulation of the behavior of fluids with different volumes in a dynamic environment."

He explained this digital twin of real-world conditions basically enables a "control loop" for manipulating reality.

Cerebras' CS-2 supercomputer can model the Rayleigh-Bénard convection process caused by fluids being heated from the bottom and cooled from the top, while the Cerebras-NETL Wafer Scale Engine field equation application programming interface describes scientific equations.

The partners said, "The simulation is expected to run several hundred times faster than what is possible on traditional distributed computers, as has been previously demonstrated with similar workloads."

From ZDNet

View Full Article  

Virtual Clothes Could Help Solve Fashion's Waste Problem

I Worked more on cleansing clothes rather than creating them.  Note Blockchain use.  Phygital.  Hmmm.  

Virtual Clothes Could Help Solve Fashion's Waste Problem

By CNN, December 23, 2022

On Phygital fashions.

Lablaco wants to use digital tools to revolutionize the fashion industry.The fashion industry is tapping digital technologies to cut waste and modernize.

Italian fashion platform Lablaco is using blockchain to digitize fashion houses and brands' collections in the "phygital" market, when customers purchase both a physical fashion item and its digital twin.

Lablaco's model keeps phygital items paired after sale so if a physical item is resold, the digital version goes to the new owner's digital wallet.

Blockchain's transparency assures the new owner of the apparel's authenticity, while its creator can track its aftersales journey.

Lablaco's Eliana Kuo said digital spaces could serve as a testbed for physical clothing by using sales data to inform real-world marketing.

From CNN

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Digital Twins and Retailwire

 How to Build a Digital Twin in Retailwire

Start learning how to build a digital twin in NVIDIA Omniverse. The session covers how to aggregate disparate 3D datasets from many software ecosystems and visualize them in full-design fidelity, with no data loss or model decimation. ...

Register Now >    (Date is past, may be available online, checking)

Improved Motion Capture with Neural Network State Prediction

 Improving Motion Capture

A One-Up on Motion Capture

MIT News, Lauren Hinkel, April 29, 2022

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and IBM researchers developed the rendering invariant state-prediction (RISP) neural network pipeline to eliminate pitfalls of motion capture by inferring environmental factors, actions, physical systemic characteristics, and control parameters. MIT's Tao Du said the method can "reconstruct a digital twin from a video of a dynamic system," which requires researchers "to ignore the rendering variances from the video clips and try to grasp of the core information about the dynamic system or the dynamic motion." RISP converts differences in images (pixels) into differences in systemic states, embedding generalizability and agnosticism in rendering configurations. RISP outperformed other techniques in simulations of four physical systems of rigid and deformable bodies—a quadrotor, a cube, an articulated hand, and a rod—and can accommodate imitation learning. ... '  ' 

Digital Twinning in the Metaverse

Digital Twinning in the Metaverse

Digital twins could be crucial to metaverse adoption?

BY  DANIEL LIPSCOMBE  in GMW3

April 13th 1970: The Apollo 13 spacecraft is 220,000 kilometres from Earth when an explosion rocks the crew and tears off one of the two oxygen tanks from the spacecraft. The blast destroyed one side of the transport, not only removing the oxygen supply from the crew but also water and some electrical systems. This disaster echoed across the world as astronaut Jack Swigert radioed to NASA control, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”

From that moment, engineers and scientists at NASA rushed to put their heads together to find a solution to Apollo’s problem. The engineers needed to solve the issue using what the Apollo crew would have to hand, but crucially, without physically seeing the damage firsthand. In the end, the fix was simple; NASA instructed the crew to use cardboard, plastic bags and tape to patch up the craft enough to get them home.

There’s not much NASA could have done at the time to foresee the issue; building several spacecraft to stress test every possible outcome would have burned through budgets swiftly. When the Apollo 13 disaster occurred, NASA engineers could no longer rely on their original designs, as the craft had failed due to an unforeseen hostile environment. The crew in Houston needed a model on Earth that directly mirrored the craft in space.

The Digital Twin

In 2002, NASA coined the term ‘digital twin’, though the original concept is a little older. A digital twin can be described as ‘a digital copy of a physical object: mechanism, building or concept based in reality’. For example, a car manufacturer may create a digital twin of their main assembly plant and use it to implement new safety protocols or install new machinery, by first trying it within a digital safe zone.

Healthcare professionals can use digital twinning to simulate rare illnesses and practice care first hand – albeit digitally – and learn the correct techniques. Planning departments in government can replicate dense population areas of cities to see how new infrastructure will impact the city and society. Environmentalists are simulating extremes of climate change on digital twins based on rainforests and oceans.

A digital twin is a living model of something physical, which, to metaverse aspirers will sound familiar. Digital twins are becoming much more popular and with the advent of more immersive technology – Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) – the concept of digital twinning is becoming more mainstream. Not only that, but it points to where the metaverse can aid industry and where digital twinning can benefit from creating the metaverse.

The Impact

To fully realise a digital twin of a location or person, sensors can be placed in the physical space to gauge temperature, humidity, footfall traffic, heart rate, etc. This data is then sent to the digital twin to be replicated and be shown in almost real-time within a 3D metaverse-style space.

The opportunities for this technology are vast and far-reaching and while the positives can be seen, there must be a balance in data use. Any sensors and personal data being beamed back and forth to digital twins must be heavily encrypted and safeguarded. Landmarks and buildings would likely contain blueprints and maps on the interiors and any personal data relating to users must be made safe.

The idea of constant monitoring may be off-putting for some, given the decentralised nature of the metaverse. If the metaverse is to be hosted by millions of users across a blockchain network such as Bitcoin or Etherium, it would make the data much harder to hack, given the security of the ledger technology. Whereas a centralised server hosting this information may be more liable to attack.

Google Supply Chain Twin

 Google seems to be playing this direction actively.

Google launches ‘digital twin’ tool for logistics and manufacturing

Kyle Wiggers @Kyle_L_Wiggers  in Venturebeat

September 14, 2021 1:30 A

Google today announced Supply Chain Twin, a new Google Cloud solution that lets companies build a digital twin — a representation of their physical supply chain — by organizing data to get a more complete view of suppliers, inventories, and events like weather. Arriving alongside Supply Chain Twin is the Supply Chain Pulse module, which can be used with Supply Chain Twin to provide dashboards, analytics, alerts, and collaboration in Google Workspace.

The majority of companies don’t have visibility of their supply chains, resulting in “stock outs” at retailers and aging inventory at manufacturers. In 2020, out-of-stock items alone cost an estimated $1.14 trillion. The past year and a half of supply chain disruptions has further shown the need for insights into operations to dynamically adjust fleet routes and inventory levels.

With Supply Chain Twin, companies can bring together data from multiple sources by enabling views of the datasets to be shared with suppliers and partners. The solution supports enterprise business systems that contain an organization’s locations, products, orders, and inventory operations data as well as data from suppliers and partners such as stock and inventory levels and material transportation status. Supply Chain Twin also draws from public sources of contextual data such as weather, risk, and sustainability.

Everyday Habits That Make You Look Older

“Digital twin” approaches to simulation have gained currency in other domains. For instance, London-based SenSat helps clients in construction, mining, energy, and other industries create models of locations for projects they’re working on. GE offers technology that allows companies to model digital twins of actual machines and closely track performance. And Microsoft provides Azure Digital Twins and Project Bonsai, which model the relationships and interactions between people, places, and devices in simulated environments. ....  ' 

LIDAR and Digital Twins

Good thoughts on this aspect of constructing a model.

Using Drone LiDAR and Photogrammetry to Create a Digital Twin   (And an IOT for testing) 

Thompson Engineering used the mdLiDAR1000HR and mdMapper1000DG to survey the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park and create a digital twin.

Cody Floyd, Surveyor PIC at Thompson Engineering, pilots the mdMapper1000DG to collect photogrammetric data.

Rome, NY- In these 4 exciting new episodes of Down to Earth, Thompson Engineering, a proven leader in planning design, construction, and response solutions, utilizes drone Photogrammetry and LiDAR technology to survey, map, and create a digital twin of the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park to help with preservation and maintenance efforts. 

To see how they collected and processed the data to create both a digital twin and complete orthophoto of the park, CLICK HERE to watch NOW On-Demand.

“Down to Earth” is a reality series that shows how real surveyors collect data and turn it into real deliverables, despite challenging terrain, rough weather, and hidden dangers.   In this latest series, the crew journeys into Mobile, Alabama, where the USS Alabama Battleship is the anchor attraction at the Memorial Park which has welcomed generations of family members, veterans, and tourists. However, large structures, an active tourist site, and other challenges face the team at Thompson Engineering as they set out to survey the Mighty A. 

On these episodes of Down to Earth, Robert Chrismon, PLS and Marketing Manager at Microdrones, joins the Thompson Engineering team to observe these challenges, provide drone surveying expertise, and offer data processing support. Brad Busby, the Survey Team Lead at Thompson says, “Having Robert out there is great support since he’s a licensed surveyor. He can relate to us and understand what we’re talking about.”

Ross Kenney, NEI UAS Sales and Support Lead, pilots the mdLiDAR1000HR while Adam McCullough, Survey Technology Lead at Thompson Engineering observes at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park

In episode 1, Robert and the team from Thompson Engineering meet up with Ross Kenney, the UAS Sales and Support Lead from Navigation Electronics, Inc. (NEI), a distributor of Microdrones integrated systems, who’s excited to demonstrate the capabilities of the all new mdLiDAR1000HR. According to Kenney, “We’re going to be able to scan every nook and cranny of that ship.” That’s because the new mdLiDAR1000HR creates high resolution point clouds and provides increased coverage.

Episode 2 introduces Cody Floyd, Surveyor PIC at Thompson, who pilots the mdMapper1000DG to perform the photogrammetry mission. This will collect the data to create an orthophoto of the entire site and provide colorization for the LiDAR point cloud. Floyd, who also interned at the Park, explains the deliverables. “We’re here to do a survey of the Battleship Memorial Park to provide them with something they can use for future improvements and additions.” 

The third episode occurs at the Mobile office of Thompson Engineering where the team works through the process and visualize portion of the workflow. Jason Gibson, PLS for Thompson Engineering reviews the trajectory processing while working towards a final orthomosaic and then Robert Chrismon displays the digital twin of the USS Alabama in a LiDAR point cloud created in mdInfinity. Adam Mccullough, Survey Technology Lead at Thompson was excited to see the data. “To me the data speaks for itself. Just looking at the point cloud, you can see how dense and crisp it is around the buildings, the planes and all the cars in the parking lot.”

The final episode is a new segment featuring a round table discussion where the team reviews the project, shares their final thoughts and insights all while enjoying a cold beverage. Watch the entire series now and see how to create a digital twin with drone LiDAR.  .... ' 

On Autodesk Tandem

My continued look at Autodesk's Tandem Digital Twin Solution.  Look for more posts here on digital twins.

DIGITAL TWIN FOR SMARTER OPERATIONS

Autodesk Tandem

Autodesk Tandem™ digital twin solution is here to free the data, to organize the data, and to standardize the data. The platform enables project teams to deliver an effortless handover, resulting in smarter operations for owners.

What is Autodesk Tandem?

This platform harnesses BIM data to create a digital twin of a facility. At the end of a project, your team can deliver to owners a comprehensive digital handover of easily accessible and insightful data that makes for ready-to-go operations.

Diagram of building phases: plan, design, build and operate.

How does Autodesk Tandem work?

It federates the data created during a project into one comprehensive digital replica. From planning to operations, it enables project teams to specify and capture data throughout a project’s lifecycle, so they can deliver a digital handover to the owner for better facility operations.

How does Autodesk Tandem help your project teams?

The digital solution empowers AEC firms to harness data. About 80% of the lifetime cost of a facility is in operations. By harnessing all the data created during a project, you deliver more value to customers. Autodesk Tandem enables more efficient operations, reduces waste, and lowers maintenance costs.

What goes into creating a digital twin handover?

Autodesk Tandem allows for a more integrated workflow involving the following stages:

1. Specify  Set up, track, manage, and define the data requirements most relevant to your project and organize them to best suit your needs.

2. Capture  Collect and aggregate the data required for your digital handover from all involved project teams and contributors into one digital hub.

3. Verify Validate that all the data is complete and accurate for an effortless digital handover.  ... '

Map Your Customer Journey

Always found the idea useful, even if not formally done.  And especially if you are including technological links.     Or perhaps a form of 'Digital-Customer-Twin' idea that might adapt to multiple products, needs, wants?    Or more of a process map-model? 

5 Reasons You Should Map Your Customer Journey

Kelechi Okeke -March 25, 2021 in CustomerThink

Today before any business can satisfy its customer needs or even exceed their expectations, good knowledge of what the customers truly want is required. This entails having an end-to-end understanding of the customers’ journey with the brand, from the awareness to loyalty stage of the buying cycle. A Customer Journey Map is a powerful tool for achieving this.

A Customer Journey Map is a diagram that shows how customers go through each stage of the buying cycle with a brand, from the customers’ point of view. The customer journey map highlights key interactions as well as customer motivations and emotional state at each touchpoint as they go through the buying cycle.

History of the Customer Journey Map

I was unable to identify the exact origin of the Customer Journey Map, but from my research, the concept evolved from Jan Carlzon’s Moments of Truth which advocated for an ecological view of the customer experience that involved looking across touchpoints.

Oxford Corporate Consultants (now OxfordSM) first introduced the concept of customer journey mapping in 1998 during their work with Eurostar to establish and implement a corporate mission and brand proposition.

OxfordSM continued to use the concept widely after this, even with the UK Government through which they eventually published the Customer Journey Mapping Guide for Practitioners.

Today more brands are turning to customer journey maps to gain insights into their experience. Here are 5 major reasons you should also map your customer journey.

#1. Identify gaps & opportunities for improvement

A customer journey map is a great tool to visualize how your customers go through each phase of the buying cycle, from Awareness to Advocacy (or Detraction). It outlines steps taken by the customer, their goals and motivation at each phase.

With this visual laid out before relevant stakeholders in an organization, it is easier to understand the current customer experience, identify pain-points and process gaps, as well as opportunities to improve the experience at each stage of the journey.  ... '

Restoring Notre-Dame with VR

Very impressive imagery on current state and progress of Notre-Dame Damage and restoration. Certainly a model for future work of this kind.  Includes video describing work.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame Rescue Is Buttressed by Digital Wizardry  By Financial Times, February 17, 2021  in ACM

Art historians, architects, computer scientists, and digital designers from around the world are leveraging virtual reality (VR), three-dimensional modeling, and cloud computing technologies to create a "virtual twin" of the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, France, as part of its reconstruction following a 2019 fire.

The simulated cathedral will display the progress in real time using images streamed from inside the cathedral by robot-sentries outfitted with cameras. Engineers and experts on medieval architecture can move through the simulation while wearing VR headsets. Architectural drawings, post-fire scientific reports, and the provenance of specific building components can be accessed by clicking on any detail.

Artificial intelligence agents also are moving quickly through pre- and post-fire images to identify surviving sculpted and limestone elements that could be reintegrated into the site.

These techniques could be used to preserve ancient architecture virtually, reconstruct centuries-old sites, or create virtual museums for iconic cultural sites.

From Financial Times

AI Can Run Simulation Faithful to Physical Laws

 A kind of 'physics twin'? 

AI Can Run Simulation Faithful to Physical Laws

Kobe University (Japan),  December 18, 2020

Researchers at Japan's Kobe University developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can simulate phenomena based on an unknown mechanism or formula, while preserving the laws of physics. The technology aims to enable predictions for phenomena that have been difficult to simulate, like wave motion or fracture mechanics, and speed up the simulations themselves. The researchers created a new digital version of backpropagation using automatic differentiation, which makes it possible to preserve physical laws in the digital world. The researchers also used geometric approaches to apply the technique to the prediction of a wider range of phenomena. ... ' 

Digital Twins for Heavy Machinery

 Again, a means of creating a 'digital twin', or simulation, to prototype, operate in context or design some 'thing'.  Here the object is heavy machinery.   But could also be a combination of machinery and process and usage context.   A way to integrate simulation with data, physical systems and context goals.  Note mentioned here another way to look at this, as 'Hardware in the Loop' or HIL.  A method we frequently used.  

Rapid Prototyping: Testing Heavy Equipment in Software

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics in Germany have developed a hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) platform that aims to make machine development faster and more affordable through the use of software simulation. Said Fraunhofer's Christian Salzig, "Our HiL simulator allows us to test heavy equipment of all kinds, including a variety of crane types and concrete pumps. This allows us to help optimize prototypes." The process involves reproducing the machine to be tested as a software model, incorporating its technical specifications and the physical laws of mechanics, hydraulics, and electronics as mathematical equations. The simulator with the digital twin is then connected to the electronic control units that control machine operation, with the machine's movements reproduced on an animated, three-dimensional display. The software can simulate the precision of operations between the machine and the control unit, as well as malfunctions and critical borderline situations.

Conversations on Architecture for Digital Twins

Based in part on a conversation with swim.ai   Have yet to look at that service, but plan to.  Seems such architecture would have to be very adaptable.    Linkable to real time and samples of stored operational data.  Useful thoughts here.  

What’s the right computing architecture for digital twins?    by 7wdata     October 17, 2020    

Last week, I found myself having a conversation that covered edge computing, digital twins, and the concept of absolute truth. It started out as a discussion with Simon Croby, the CTO of Swim.ai, about that company’s latest product, which is designed to bring Swim’s edge analytics software to the enterprise and industrial world. But it quickly broadened to a conversation about the way we think about data storage and compute when we want to act on real-time information and insights.

Basically, with IoT we’re trying to get a continuous and current view of machines, traffic, environmental conditions, or whatever else so we can use that information to take some sort of action. That action might be predicting when a machine will fail, or routing traffic more efficiently, but for many use cases, the time between gathering the data, offering an insight, and then taking action will be short.

And by short, I mean the data might need to be analyzed before a traffic light changes or a person walks more than a few feet away from a shelf in a grocery store. Figuring out how to analyze incoming data and then create a model based on it, such as of an intersection or shoppers, so that a computer can act on it is what led to our discussion of truth. Crosby’s point was that truth changes every second, so if we’re trying to build a digital twin that represents the truth of a machine or a model, it needs to constantly change. And that has a lot of implications for how we think about computing architectures for digital twins.

For example, Swim.ai is working with a U.S. telecommunications company to create a digital twin of the carrier’s network in real time and then optimize that network based on the ongoing movements of people and any applications they’re running. The carrier is tracking 150 million cellular devices, which together generate 4 petabytes of data each day. With 5G on the horizon and an increasing number elements to track between devices and base stations, the carrier expects that the amount of data it will need to analyze will reach 20 petabytes.

Prior to Swim, the carrier would take that data and move it to a 400-node Hadoop cluster to analyze it in batches. It took roughly 6 hours and required a lot of servers. After switching to Swim’s software, the carrier can track those 150 million devices and base stations and start taking actions on its network in just 100 milliseconds.  ... " 

Digital Assets in a Secure and Open Infrastructure With Digital Twins

Brought to my attention, note my previous posts about IOTA and possibilities for use in IOT applications using 'smart contract'  style architectures.

Zero Defects, Digital Twins and IOTA

Pickert (https://pickert.de/)  and the IOTA Foundation jointly demonstrate the power of zero defects and digital twins for manufacturing.

Supply Chain tracking is one way to demonstrate the benefits of IOTA’s ability to store information about digital assets in a secure and open infrastructure. The IOTA Tangle guarantees not only the immutability of data, but also the sharing of information across customers and partners in the value chain. One example is the Trade Logistics Information Pipeline (TLIP), which is set up to create an interconnected technology highway for Eastern African businesses and governments’ agencies systems to communicate with each other and international counterparts in a transparent and secure manner. This allows for more established trust in the tracking of provenance and authenticity.

Today, we add an important piece of information — the digital twin and IOTA’s role in smart manufacturing.  ... " 

USAF Seeks Shift in How Jets, Missiles, Satellites Are Designed

Makes sense to construct a digital model of any complex system. The robustness of the model will be important.  Also depends on contexts of use.  Risks. 

USAF Seeks Shift in How Jets, Missiles, Satellites Are Designed
The Washington Post
Aaron Gregg; Paul Sonne

U.S. Air Force acquisition and technology official Will Roper aims to make computer modeling a requirement for designing military jets, missiles, and satellites. He envisions government-owned, computer-generated models powered by artificial intelligence that test millions of potential weapons designs virtually before going to prototype, at significantly lower cost. Roper was inspired by Boeing and Saab's use of digital models in designing the T-7 Red Hawk trainer aircraft, especially "digital threading," in which designers produced a digital twin of the jet before manufacture. The National Defense Industrial Association's Hawk Carlisle said with digital engineering, "you can produce an airplane that is much faster, has fewer challenges in the manufacturing process, and is much more accurate and perfect."

Robo Teammates in their Context

A kind of digital twin and context interaction with sensors and updates. 

U.S. Army Robo-Teammate Can Detect, Share 3D Changes in Real Time
U.S. Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs

Researchers at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory (ARL) have shown that robots equipped with LiDAR can detect physical changes in a three-dimensional, real-world environment, and share that information with a person in real time via augmented reality eyewear. The human observer then can evaluate the information and determine how to respond. Said ARL's Christopher Reardon, "This could let robots inform their soldier teammates of changes in the environment that might be overlooked by or not perceptible to the soldier, giving them increased situational awareness and offset from potential adversaries.” Robots equipped with LiDAR, Reardon said, “could detect anything from camouflaged enemy soldiers to IEDs.” ... ' 

Digital Twins in Wargaming and Beyond

An example of 'Digital Twins' in wargaming.   In the DOD we used many forms where the twin was an enhanced image with underlying technical details to emulate its operation, on a large scale terminal.   Specifically agents usually in observable environments.   As the piece suggests these don't need to be military examples, but any operational, typically spatial simulation, that has many operating agents and parameters.     Operational disaster relief is another good example.   Good general description below.

Covid-19 Crisis Accelerates U.K. Military's Push Into Virtual War Gaming  By Financial Times

The U.K. Ministry of Defence is looking to fast-track new virtual reality technology from software developer Improbable that would create a digital replica of the country. The technology could be used to test resilience to future pandemics, natural disasters, and attacks by hostile states.

Known as a "single synthetic environment," the technology layers maps of geographical terrain and critical infrastructure with details of fuel, power, and water supplies, telecom networks, weather patterns, and more. This virtual "twin" uses artificial intelligence to simulate future scenarios and offers the ability to "war game" responses.

The Ministry of Defence hopes eventually to build simulations of likely conflict zones. "What we're aiming for in the longer term is . . . to enable governments to test ideas and test choices of action in a virtual world before implementing them in the real world," says Improbable's Chief Executive Joe Robinson.

From Financial Times  
View Full Article – May Require Paid Subscription

Virtual Metabolic Human Models

Considerable complexity in such models, but they at least will point to the kinds and amounts of data and predictions that will be necessary to provide computational results.   A kind of Digital Twin.

Virtual Metabolic Humans—Harvey and Harvetta, Novel Computational Models for Personalized Medicine
Science Foundation Ireland
June 3, 2020

Researchers at National University of Ireland and the Netherlands' Leiden University have created whole-body human computational models for personalized medicine called Harvey and Harvetta. The models can simulate individual metabolisms, physiologies, diets, and gut microbiomes; they also can predict known biomarkers of inherited metabolic diseases, and facilitate investigation of potential metabolic interactions between humans and their gut microbiomes. Harvey and Harvetta are anatomically interconnected whole-body virtual male and female models incorporating more than 80,000 biochemical reactions distributed across 26 organs and six blood-cell types. Their development required the creation of novel algorithms and software for constraint-based simulation of high-dimensional biochemical networks. Leiden University's Ines Thiele said, “Harvey and Harvetta will usher in a new era for research into causal host-microbiome relationships and greatly accelerate the development of targeted dietary and microbial intervention strategies.”