IoT + Digital Twin: How do these two technological trends work together?
Otavio Carneiro Correa
Entrepreneur ║ CEO ║ Corrosion Specialist ║ Vidya Technology
The disruption of Digital Transformation combined with Industry 4.0 trends, brought new technologies to the industrial sector. The following two, IoT (Internet of Things) and Digital Twin, are nowadays well-known examples.?
There are a couple of things that motivated Digital Transformation and brought many technological innovations to industries:?
In this scenario, there are many technological solutions that could be addressed too. So why all the fuss about IoT and Digital Twin??
The IoT disruption?
IoT (Internet of Things) or IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) - an industrial version of the technology - can be roughly defined as the ability of devices to communicate with each other without human interference. This concept was born in 1999, in the Auto-ID laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was only possible to develop the technology thanks to low-cost sensors, microchips, and the constant development of technologies related to cloud connectivity and processing. Some of the great IoT allies in this process were:?
Although IoT is related to the capability of communication between devices, it is already common to relate IoT with sensors. In practice, sensors powered with IoT are installed in specific equipment, piping, and or any other structure, extract data and information from it, and transmit that data to a cloud. Using Artificial Intelligence, and other kinds of platforms, such as Digital Twins you can also process, analyze and feed databases. The communication between the devices can be made through the internet, Bluetooth systems, and dedicated networks mesh.?
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How does the Digital Twin relate to it??
Digital Twin was initially designed for the Project Life-cycle Management (PLM) at the beginning of the 2000s. The idea was to build a constant flow of information that could go from the physical object to the digital model and vice-versa. Just from this idea, it is possible to see that both technologies have in their concepts a network of data, but the IoT one flows only to the receiver platform, and Digital Twins also do the opposite way.?
Nowadays Digital Twins have multiple applications, from healthcare and NASA researches to the industrial sector. And, as it is for IoT, Artificial Intelligence is also used to empower Digital Twins solutions, for the extraction, processing, management, recognition, and analysis of data from the equipment of industrial facilities, for instance.?
In fact, Digital Twins became very popular after companies had already implemented IoT solutions. According to a Gartner survey:?
“We predicted that by 2022, over two-thirds of companies that have implemented IoT will have deployed at least one digital twin in production. We might actually reach that number within a year.”
On practice: How do they work together??
Both technologies have connectivity as their core. In industrial plants, IoT sensors are applied to specific assets, then they send real-time data about this asset to a cloud platform, where the data is processed and stored. Then, it’s time to implement the Digital Twin. This data in the cloud is connected and fed to the Digital Twin platform, which will analyze this data, cross with other information, contextualize it, and deliver outputs into the platform for operators.?
Even further: you can use AI in this process to power up the flow of data with analytics, predictive algorithms, and much more. In that way, it is easier to access all the information needed for the operation, being possible to even predict or simulate future operation scenarios, resulting in more assertive decision-making.
Vidya Digital Twin platform crosses data from different sources and brings valuable outputs for operation and maintenance phases. Learn more about Digital Twin and start your data-driven future!