Comment by haritha-j
3 days ago
As someone doing PhD in digital twins, I’m obliged to point out that this is a simulation, not a digital twin, as there is no two way data interchange between the models. Having said that, this is extremely cool and I love it.
I didn't know digital twin had an official definition. Could you please share a bit more on what makes a simulation a digital twin?
A 'digital twin' is a model that evolves over the lifetime of a physical asset. So if the state of the real device changes, so does the model (data assimilation). Likewise, one can use the model for control/planning/"what-if" scenarios. This is the bi-directional information flow that's being mentioned.
So what I'm showing on the website is just the model part. I'm not a fan of exposing my hardware in a public demo (the digital twin part), but the idea is that this model evolves with the roaster during the roast (data assimilation) and can help the operator guide the roaster to a desired end goal (e.g. medium roast along some profile or with minimal energy usage).
From Wikipedia:
> A digital twin is a digital model of an intended or actual real-world physical product, system, or process (a physical twin) that serves as a digital counterpart of it for purposes such as simulation, integration, testing, monitoring, and maintenance.
> A digital twin is "a set of adaptive models that emulate the behaviour of a physical system in a virtual system getting real time data to update itself along its life cycle. The digital twin replicates the physical system to predict failures and opportunities for changing, to prescribe real time actions for optimizing and/or mitigating unexpected events observing and evaluating the operating profile system."
Digital twins are bidirectional.
Change something in real life, thebdigital twin changes.
Adjust something on the twin, and so adjusts the real machine.