Metaverse and Digital Twins

The term "digital twin" refers to a synchronized digital representation of a real-world item, system, or process (Singh, et al., 2021). Sensors and two-way Internet of Things (IoT) connections allow this technology to sync the digital and physical worlds, and vice versa, in real-time. When anything happens in reality, the digital representation (the twin) updates to reflect the new information, and this feedback loop continues in the other direction.

Digital twins are one of the building elements of the metaverse because of their inherent qualities. For all its potential to deliver us new and exciting virtual worlds, the metaverse also has tremendous uses in generating precise replicas of the real world (Alvim, 2022). A virtual fashion designer's shop where you may try on items before you buy them is a great idea. If you're like most people, you'd like your avatar to reflect your real height and weight.

A smartphone snapshot or data from an intelligent weighing scale may, for example, be used to update these. A conference in the metaverse would be more effective if attendees were able to engage with an identical duplicate of the company's equipment and information system. Technicians are already able to handle 3D models of complicated systems in technical training programs.

Digital twins of machines that require servicing, as well as all the necessary tools, may one day be able to be recreated in the metaverse and perhaps linked to or mapped onto a real workshop so that any sort of maintenance can be performed remotely (Chow, 2021). Metaverse-based digital twins are just now being looked at by commercial and technical industries, as well as B2C and B2B. This is because the metaverse is just now being looked at for its potential applications.

Digital twins, on the other hand, are not a novel concept (Jones, Snider, Nassehi, Yon, & Hicks, 2020). The automotive and aerospace sectors were the first to use digital reproductions of industrial equipment in order to improve operational efficiency and maintenance. As a result, digital twins have been used in a wide range of industries, from urban planning and construction to logistics and healthcare (Yang & Gu, 2021).

For example, digitizing product or industrial machine information to show how it evolves over time is a straightforward use case. In addition, a 3D representation of a city could be used to let the public or people who work in the economy look around this visual representation and find new urban developments in the future. Other applications are more complex. Using a digital twin of an automobile to model its behavior can save time and money, for example, in the search for the best configuration. Change the virtual car's setup and copy it while you build the future car to do this.

One of the most significant applications of digital twins is in human anatomy and researcher found that vaccines have distinct effects on everyone (Pilati , Tronconi, Nollo, Heragu, & Zerzer, 2021,). It is far more efficient to test a novel vaccination on a digital twin of a specific individual than on a generic human model, which speeds up the time to market (Wei, 2021). A combination of big data and artificial intelligence will allow us to forecast how physical elements will behave in the future Digital twins.

An investigation into digital twins was initiated in 2016 as a part of work on the Internet of Things (IoT) (Shahzad, et al., 2022; Steinmetz, et al., 2018). Thus, the IOT has been built to facilitate the development of tangible use cases from digital representations of items. It's being done by some groups to make it easier for people to report problems in their cities, like a broken bridge or a tree branch blocking a road. These projects are called "smart cities" or "smart infrastructure”.

Before'metaverse', governments had been working on smart cities as part of their future plans. Cities, especially those in developing nations, are making the switch from analog to digital technology. If cities and states want to succeed in the "metaverse" period, they'll have to adapt to a new way of interacting with one other and accomplishing their goals. It appears that cities will always have new aims to work toward, and the search for new targets will continue. Robots and the wonders of artificial intelligence will soon be a part of our everyday lives (AI).

Works Cited

Alvim, L. (2022, January 28). Retrieved from How the metaverse could impact the world and the future of technology: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/metaverse-impact-world-future-technology/story?id=82519587

Chow, A. R. (2021, December 30). Retrieved February 2022, from How Digital Twins Are Transforming Manufacturing, Medicine and More: https://time.com/6131320/digital-twins-uses/

Jones, D., Snider, C., Nassehi, A., Yon, J., & Hicks, B. (2020). Characterising the Digital Twin: A systematic literature review. CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology, 29, 36-52.

Pilati , F., Tronconi, R., Nollo, G., Heragu, S. S., & Zerzer, F. (2021,). Digital Twin of COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Centers. Sustainability, 13, 7396.

Shahzad, M., Shafiq, M., Douglas, D., & Kassem, M. (2022). Digital Twins in Built Environments: An Investigation of the Characteristics, Applications, and Challenges. Buildings , 12, 120.

Singh, M., Fuenmayor, E., Hinchy, E., Qiao, Y., Murray, N., & Devine, D. (2021). Digital Twin: Origin to Future. Applied System Innovation, 4(2), 36.

Steinmetz, C., Rettberg, A., Ribeiro, F. C., Schroeder, G., & Pereira, C. E. (2018). Internet of Things Ontology for Digital Twin in Cyber Physical Systems. 2018 VIII Brazilian Symposium on Computing Systems Engineering (SBESC), (pp. 154-159). Salvador, Brazil.

Wei, S. (2021). Is Human Digital Twin possible? Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine Update, 1.

Yang, F., & Gu, S. (2021). Industry 4.0, a revolution that requires technology and national strategies. Complex & Intelligent Systems, 7, 1311–1325.