Why everything — and your child — will have digital twins
Tags: Digital Twin, Connected Home, Connected Health

Digital Twins in business and beyond

Inherent in what we do in Block Zero is the interplay between the physical and the digital world. Sometimes by adding digital properties to physical entities, other times using physical representation of digital concepts, and on the horizon we see an ever increasing integration between the two.

One of the concepts that we have seen emerging strongly in digitalisation the past half-decade is a phenomenon frequently named Digital Twins.

Definition

We describe digital twins as a continuously connected digital representation of a physical system that can be used to predict or explain the physical system. The twin becomes a model that reacts in the same way to stimuli as the physical counterpart, and by having that twin-entity, predictions can be drawn from what would happen to the physical version in various scenarios.

A digital twin does not have to cover ALL aspects of the physical counterpart in order to live up to being a twin, the quality of the predictions is the key, not the quantity of the data.

With this definition at hand, let’s take a closer look at current implementations of digital twins and how we could apply the concept in new domains.

So far digital twin implementations have mostly been discussed in industrial settings and property management, and we will use those two areas below to describe the idea in detail before exploring why the concept could be applied in various other domains. Concrete examples from the industry floors are still scarce but two players that boast about how they use digital twins are Siemens — helping their customers predict maintenance and analysis in production and IBM — using it to improve utilisation of buildings.

Twins in Industry

In industrial settings, digital twins can lead to even higher degrees of automatisation and throughput, improving quality and lowering costs. To describe the possibilities more concretely let’s look at a basic fluid pump. For several decades machines like this have been continuously measured in various ways, for example with electricity usage, flow meters, and heat measurers.

Together these data points have created useful digital representations of such pumps, it has given a good way to show the status of in the control room as well as remotely and have been able to send warnings when something has gone wrong.

But there is one important difference between this reactive representation and a digital twin. In the representation we get a red flag when some threshold has already passed. With a digital twin we can run the digital counterpart in different simulated cycles to get a prediction of malfunction and prepare for maintenance before anything starts to break down.

This makes twins a useful tool and concept when dealing with machinery inside industries. Replacing units in a controlled manner before they cause shutdowns are obviously preferred — at the same time as the number of separate parts can be staggering and replacing them sooner than needed to be on the safe side is a huge waste.

Twins in Property Management

Second to the case of machinery in a production plant another industry that has really adopted the idea of digital twins is property management.

Many commercial buildings have a lot of space that is unused a large part of the time, big savings can be made here in both energy consumption and maintenance costs if resources are used more efficiently. With data on how people move as well as recorded need for cleaning, replenishing and heating a digital twin model can be built that can help to plan ahead and better utilise both floor space, staff and supplies.

Block Zero’s contribution to a hackathon a couple of years ago where we sketched on a digital twin of an old-folks’-home that could be used for planning cleaning and separation of wings during a virus outbreak.

Another large cost in commercial buildings is of course heating — and cooling. Block Zero has over the past year and a half partnered with E.On on visualisation technologies for intelligent temperature regulations based on digital models of energy needs in buildings. With these models the energy usage can be optimised, saving both costs and environment and help regulate the power grid for more sustainable energy contributions.

Bringing digital twins home

We have discussed above how digital twins have apparent benefits in different business sectors, but how could they be utilised in other more private arenas? Let’s look at the same trends leaning towards fields of use that are closer to home.

For us as individuals, the equivalent of a digital twin in property management is controlling our home. Players like Amazon are building models on the movement and behaviour in as many homes as they can in order to sell us supplies before we know we need it and appliance manufacturers like Electrolux want to use information about our habits to optimise and predict needs to cleaning — and supplies. Both of these are early versions of digital twins.

The other household case concerns our vehicles, primarily cars, where many manufactures attempt at building twins, for better prediction of service — and usage. This is something that becomes even more important for electrical vehicles that need to be charged enough before being used in the morning but can be charged and discharged in various cycles to be part of a smart electrical grid when they are not in active use.

Horse twin

At Block Zero, we did during 2019 turn our collaboration gaze at a company called Hoofstep in what can be called a digital twin for horses. Besides the fact that their system connects a living, breathing beast, the underlying description, concept and — in many ways — usage would be the same as the technical systems mentioned above. Correlating sufficient data points, as blood sugar level, pulse and sweat content we can say a lot about the status of the four legged friend.

Adding movement sensors a digital twin can start to emulate wear, efficiency, illness and maybe even happiness — without the need for a strict description of all biological processes. If a certain movement causes higher pulse today than last week it could be a sign that something is not right. And with the predictive power of the twin we can plan training, feeding and maybe socialisation to maximise the horse “output”.

Twins for ourselves and our kids

For most humans, self-monitoring and controlling the inner workings of the body is hard. We feel good, bad, cranky, hungry over the course of a single day and even if we have rudimentary ideas on what affects us there are a lot of factors and nuances we simply don’t have control over. What if digital twins could be something that could help us here too?

Analogous to discussions above we start with the continuous digital representation of the body. With running trackers and smart watches, heart rate is now a commonly recorded value. And more is likely coming, a few years ago Block Zero collaborated with Swift Labs in Canada on creating a wearable for obstacle course racing that contained measurements of even more parameters to explicitly build up a digital twin model of the body — to predict when the athlete needed a break or even medical attention during a race.

Adding parameters from insulin measurements, thermometers and patterns from movement a sophisticated picture emerges that could be able to predict body reaction more accurately and faster than our own perception. And if we look a bit ahead and add analytical technology in the toothbrush or maybe the toilet far more could be added to that picture.

Know thy child (or their twin)

For the next step, we raise a difficult proposition to anyone who ever tended to a toddler. What if this analysis can be made available for the well being of a small child. As little as we know about how our bodies feel and what we can do about it — we do have the faculties to put symptoms together and make a case for either personal action (eating a sandwich) or verbalising a need to someone else. But for really young ones we know that neither of these options are available and in most cases the one thing that is upholding a positive homeostasis of small childrens’ bodies and wellbeing is a complicated guessing game as well as trial and error of parents.

This is still speculation and a thought experiment, but we think that using technology to build a digital twin of a small child is more limited by individual and societal acceptance than technological obstacles.

Many people would cringe at the idea of permanent needles in your baby’s blood stream. But if the choice is between sleepless nights or a digital twin that can verbalise the bodily needs of the child — it might be a price that at least some guardians are willing to pay.

Who owns a Twin?

Most digital twin technologies described above is built around computing powers in the cloud. Coming from a background of connectivity it has been easy for us to see the efficiency and scalability that such and approach brings. But using a user centered approach it’s also worth asking who owns the data that form the twins. Do we have a say in who analyses all the guests in my house, exactly where my car has been, what I did when I became upset — and with what corporate voice will my unborn speak before they can form words of their own?