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The integration of cognitive digital twin technology with the Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to revolutionize the marketplace by providing companies with valuable insights into their products and processes.

What is Cognitive Digital Twin Technology?

Cognitive digital twin technology is a virtual model of a physical system that uses data and artificial intelligence (AI) to simulate and predict the behavior of that system. This technology combines data from sensors and other sources with machine learning algorithms to create a digital representation of a physical system.

A cognitive digital twin model can be used to monitor and analyze the behavior of a system in real-time, and it can be used to simulate the behavior of that system under different conditions. By using this technology, companies can gain insights into the performance of their products, optimize their operations, and reduce maintenance costs.

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies that enable them to connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet.

IoT devices can collect data from their environment, such as temperature, humidity, and pressure, and transmit that data to other devices or systems for analysis. By using IoT devices, companies can monitor their products and processes in real-time and gain insights into how they are performing.

The Impact of Integrating Cognitive Digital Twin Technology With IoT?

Cognitive digital twin technology can be integrated with IoT by using data from IoT devices to create a digital twin model of a physical system. IoT devices can provide data about the performance of a product or process, which can be used to create a digital twin model.

The digital twin model can then be used to simulate the behavior of the physical system under different conditions and to predict how the system will behave in the future. By using IoT data to create a digital twin model, companies can gain insights into the performance of their products and processes, and they can optimize their operations to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

There are several benefits to integrating cognitive digital twin technology with IoT, including:

  1. Predictive Maintenance: By using a cognitive digital twin model, companies can predict when maintenance is required on their products or processes, reducing downtime and maintenance costs.
  2. Improved Efficiency: By monitoring the performance of their products and processes in real-time, companies can optimize their operations to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
  3. Reduced Waste: With CDT, companies can reduce waste by identifying areas where resources are being wasted.
  4. Enhanced Product Design: By using a cognitive digital twin model, companies can simulate the behavior of their products under different conditions and make design changes in the earlier stages of R&D to improve performance, reduce costs, and cut time from POC to market.
  5. Improved Customer Experience: By monitoring the performance of their products in real-time, companies can improve the customer experience by identifying and addressing issues before they become major problems.

How the Market is Already Benefiting from Digital Twin and IoT Technologies

Many industries are already benefiting from the kinds of integration between CDT and IoT technologies. Chief among these is the transportation industry.

Cognitive digital twin technologies coupled with IoT are already proving invaluable for predictive maintenance of high-value military vehicles, airplanes, ships, and even passenger cars. For example, digital twin solutions like those developed by CarTwin extend the lifespan of cars and other vehicles by monitoring the vehicle’s “health” through its “digital twin.”

Basically, CarTwin can provide diagnostic and predictive models for all vehicle systems for which data is available (either directly or indirectly) onboard the vehicle.

Virtually any part of the vehicle that has sensors or that sensors can be developed for can be “twinned.” These data sets are then enhanced and augmented with design and manufacturing data that is already available by the OEM.

Primarily designed for use in fleets of vehicles, in combination with powerful AI models, CarTwin predicts breakdowns, monitors and improves performance, and measures and records real-time greenhouse gas emissions, which reduces expensive maintenance costs and avoids lost revenue associated with fleet downtime.

You can read much more about how AI and digital twin technology in my new book Quantum Care: A Deep Dive into AI for Health Delivery and Research. While the book’s primary focus is on healthcare delivery, it also takes a deep dive into digital twin tech, with an entire chapter devoted to CDT, as well as IoT, and the development and launch of CarTwin!

Rohit Mahajan is a Managing Partner at BigRio and the President and Co-Founder of Citadel Discovery. He has a particular expertise in the development and design of innovative AI and machine learning solutions for clients in Healthcare, Financial Services, Retail, Automotive, Manufacturing, and other industry segments.

CarTwin has leveraged AI and Digital Twin technologies to create a digital, cloud-based clone of a physical vehicle designed to detect, prevent, predict, and optimize through AI and real-time analytics. If you would like to benefit from our expertise in these areas or if you have further questions on the content of this article, please do not hesitate to contact us.

A very interesting use of AI and digital twin technology may offer new insights into the infamous sinking of the Titanic.

A digital twin is an AI-driven computer simulation of a real-world object. Cognitive digital twinning or “CDT” technology has been used to create digital twins for the maintenance and diagnostics of everything from sophisticated jet fighters to human organs! Now, CDT may solve one of the most enduring mysteries of modern times, how did the Titanic actually sink?

The RMS Titanic sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic in 1912, but the fate of the ship and its passengers has fascinated the popular imagination for more than a century. Now we have the first full-size 3D digital scan of the complete wreckage—a “digital twin” that captures Titanic in unprecedented detail. Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions — which is making a documentary film about the project – conducted the scans over a six-week expedition last summer.

“Great explorers have been down to the Titanic… but actually, they went with really low-resolution cameras, and they could only speculate on what happened,” Atlantic Productions CEO Andrew Geffen told BBC News. “We now have every rivet of the Titanic, every detail, we can put it back together, so for the first time, we can actually see what happened and use real science to find out what happened.”

The ship split apart as it sank, with the bow and stern sections lying roughly one-third of a mile apart.

When the first divers made it to the wreck in 1985, the bow proved to be surprisingly intact, while the stern showed severe structural damage, likely flattened from the impact as it hit the ocean floor. There is a debris field spanning a 5-by-3-mile area, filled with furniture fragments, dinnerware, shoes and boots, and other personal items.

The joint mission by Magellan and Atlantic Productions deployed two submersibles nicknamed Romeo and Juliet to map every millimeter of the wreck, including the debris field spanning some three miles. The result was a whopping 16 terabytes of data, along with over 715,000 still images and 4K video footage. That raw data was then processed to create the 3D digital twin. The resolution is so good one can make out part of the serial number on one of the propellers.

“This model is the first one based on a pure data cloud that stitches all that imagery together with data points created by a digital scan, and with the help of a little artificial intelligence, we are seeing the first unbiased view of the wreck,” historian and Titanic expert Parks Stephenson told BBC News. “I believe this is a new phase for underwater forensic investigation and examination.”

Time is running out for what’s left of the famous shipwreck. Damage from previous salvage operations and deterioration due to iron-munching bacteria feasting on the ship’s hull will mean the wreck may soon be lost to history. These full-size 3D scans will preserve all the minute details for further study, giving researchers fresh insight into what really happened in April 1912—so people can finally have some definitive answers.

Other Applications Benefiting From Digital Twin Technology

In addition to such esoteric applications as providing amazing new insights into unsolved mysteries such as the sinking of the great ship Titanic, AI and digital twinning are revolutionizing many other industries, chief among them transportation. Just as CDT can create a digital duplicate of a ship like the Titanic, cognitive digital twin technologies are proving invaluable for the predictive maintenance of high-value military vehicles, airplanes, ships, and even passenger cars. Digital twin solutions like those developed by CarTwin extend the lifespan of cars and other vehicles by monitoring the vehicle’s “health” through its “digital twin.”

Basically, CarTwin can provide diagnostic and predictive models for all vehicle systems for which data is available (either directly or indirectly) onboard the vehicle.

Virtually any part of the vehicle that has sensors or that sensors can be developed for can be “twinned.” These data sets are then enhanced and augmented with design and manufacturing data that is already available by the OEM.

Primarily designed for use in fleets of vehicles, in combination with powerful AI models, CarTwin predicts breakdowns, monitors and improves performance, and measures and records real-time greenhouse gas emissions, which reduces expensive maintenance costs and avoids lost revenue associated with fleet downtime.

You can read much more about how AI and digital twin technology in my new book Quantum Care: A Deep Dive into AI for Health Delivery and Research. While the book’s primary focus is on healthcare delivery, it also takes a deep dive into digital twin tech, with an entire chapter devoted to CDT and the development and launch of CarTwin!

Rohit Mahajan is a Managing Partner at BigRio and the President and Co-Founder of Citadel Discovery. He has particular expertise in the development and design of innovative AI and machine learning solutions for clients in Healthcare, Financial Services, Retail, Automotive, Manufacturing, and other industry segments.

CarTwin has leveraged AI and Digital Twin technologies to create a digital, cloud-based clone of a physical vehicle designed to detect, prevent, predict, and optimize through AI and real-time analytics. If you would like to benefit from our expertise in these areas or if you have further questions on the content of this article, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Digital twin technology is becoming more and more mainstream, particularly when it comes to the maintenance and monitoring of complex mechanical systems such as aircraft.

GENEX, an EU-funded startup, has announced the creation of a new digital twin framework that will be used to create “the next generation” of safer and greener composite aircraft.

Launched on Sept. 1, 2022, GENEX is a 42-month, 5.7 million Horizon Europe collaborative research project seeking to develop an end-to-end digital twin-driven framework for optimized manufacturing and maintenance of next-generation composite aircraft structures.

According to the company, “enhanced computational models will embed interdisciplinary knowledge of aircraft components and manufacturing/repair processes to support their optimization as well as enable data management and monitoring across the entire life cycle of the aircraft’s operation.”

GENEX will really ramp up in the New Year. It is projected to run through 2026.

According to a company press release about the initiative, “The core of the GENEX project is based on three [digital twin] blocks focused on different facets of the aircraft use life, which, eventually, will be integrated into a fourth to form the multidisciplinary digital twin.”

Each block is as follows:

     • Block 1 – Manufacturing Process Digital Twin: An automated tape laying (ATL) process, coupled with hybrid-twin simulation methods, will be developed for the eco-efficient and advance manufacture of recyclable thermoplastic composites.

      • Block 2 – Product Usage Digital Twin: Data- and physics-based machine learning (ML) algorithms for damage detection and location, combined with high-performance computing (HPC)-based multi-physics and AI-powered digital twin tools for fatigue life prediction.

      • Block 3 – MRO Digital Twin: Augmented reality tools, together with novel laser-assisted methods for surface cleaning and monitoring, smart monitoring, and in-situ tailored heating of composite repair blankets, will be further developed to provide additional assistance in manual scarf repair operations, increasing the reliability of the repair process, while supporting the modification and virtual certification of MRO practices.

    • Block 4 – Cognitive Digital Twin: Combined integration of blocks 1-3 for the realization of a digital twin-drive framework implemented into a common industrial internet of things (IIoT) platform.

“The aviation industry is facing a two-fold challenge — targeting carbon neutrality while also adopting the digitalization of next-generation aircraft,” Dr. Calvo-Echenique says. “In GENEX, we hope to provide the needed technological impulse to optimize composite components manufacturing, and operation and repair processes using digital twin strategies.”

Other Industries Benefiting from Digital Twin Technologies

As you can see from the GENEX project, AI and digital twinning are revolutionizing many industries, chief among them transportation. Cognitive digital twin technologies are proving invaluable for the predictive maintenance of high-value military vehicles, airplanes, ships, and even passenger cars. Digital twin solutions like those developed by CarTwin extend the lifespan of cars and other vehicles by monitoring the vehicle’s “health” through its “digital twin.”

Basically, CarTwin can provide diagnostic and predictive models for all vehicle systems for which data is available (either directly or indirectly) onboard the vehicle.
Virtually any part of the vehicle that has sensors or that sensors can be developed for can be “twinned.” These data sets are then enhanced and augmented with design and manufacturing data that is already available by the OEM.

Primarily designed for use in fleets of vehicles, in combination with powerful AI models, CarTwin predicts breakdowns, monitors and improves performance, measures and records real-time greenhouse gas emissions, which reduces expensive maintenance costs and avoids lost revenue associated with fleet downtime.

Rohit Mahajan is a Managing Partner at BigRio and the President and Co-Founder of Citadel Discovery. He has a particular expertise in the development and design of innovative AI and machine learning solutions for clients in Healthcare, Financial Services, Retail, Automotive, Manufacturing, and other industry segments.

CarTwin has leveraged AI and Digital Twin technologies to create a digital, cloud-based clone of a physical vehicle designed to detect, prevent, predict, and optimize through AI and real-time analytics. If you would like to benefit from our expertise in these areas or if you have further questions on the content of this article, please do not hesitate to contact us.