I’m participating in nuggets Creators Camp # 4, click here to learn more and learn together!

Many people have spoken of digital twins at some point in their careers or lives. In the past few years, the popularity of this word has increased, frequently appearing in various summit forums, and even in the remote collaboration of the Beijing Winter Olympics, attracting the attention of people inside and outside the industry.

So what exactly are digital twins? What are the core technologies? What is the market prospect in the future? What are the problems? What will be the trend?

Take a look at this article with these questions in mind.

1. Concept explanation

Digital twins are also known as Digital mapping or Digital mirroring.

Definition: Digital twin uses real physical model, sensor, operation history and other data to integrate comprehensive simulation process and complete simulation mapping in virtual space, so as to predict the life cycle process of corresponding real entity equipment.

The us Department of Defense first proposed the use of digital twin technology for the health maintenance and support of aerospace vehicles.

Hot news

After the Spring Festival, several exhibition boards developed by Beiyang AI Town, located in Huajing Town, Xuhui District, Shanghai, show the prototype of the town’s construction. The project is committed to building a demonstration site for the all-domain application of artificial intelligence, with big data as the core, to achieve all-domain application in urban information infrastructure, public infrastructure, public service facilities and other aspects.

During the recent Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Intel and its partners jointly developed the Venue Simulation Services (VSS) digital twin Venue Simulation system to solve the problem of remote real-time cooperation for broadcasting. Assist remote work of Beijing Winter Olympic Games event operation and foreign broadcast teams.

“Xunwei” is a modeling tool and digital twin engine provider in the field of urban digital twin. Founded in 2016, xunwei focuses on the research and development of the underlying modeling tool and digital twin engine technology in the operation and maintenance stage, and has obtained tens of millions of yuan angel round financing by relying on this technology.

Iii. Market analysis

1. Macro environment analysis

In April 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) jointly issued the Implementation Plan on Promoting the Action of “Using Numbers to Empower Intelligence in The Cloud” to Foster New Economic Development, which put digital twin technology on a level with big data, artificial intelligence, 5G and other new technologies, and launched the “Developing digital Twin Innovation Plan”. It calls for “engaging all parties to come up with solutions to digital twinings”.

The fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee issued the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and suggestions for the Long-term Goals of 2035, which put forward that the country must speed up digital development to firmly build itself into a manufacturing, quality, network and digital China.

In the document of Planning Outline of Hebei Xiongan New Area, the CPC Central Committee and The State Council require “simultaneous planning of digital city and real city to create a digital platform showing multidimensional urban space. Digital twin platform has gradually become one of the core innovative elements of innovative smart city construction.

2. Overseas markets

Digital twinning has received a lot of attention since 2011, when the US Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA jointly proposed the construction of digital twinning for future aircraft. Since then, foreign scholars, the United States military, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Airbus and other international institutions and enterprises have listed digital twin technology as the future top technology and strategic development direction, and actively promote the practical application of digital twin technology.

3. Domestic market

Domestic digital twin concept listed companies are mainly Debang Shares, Huali Chuangtong, Jiangsu CNC, Huazhong CNC, etc., from the perspective of the compound growth of non-net profit deduction in the past five years, the compound growth of non-net profit deduction in the past five years is 23.76%, the turnover of the last five years is 7.73 million yuan in August 2019, the highest is 90.56 million yuan in January 2022. As of February 23, 2022, the turnover of digital twin has exceeded 15.916 billion, with the market showing a slow growth trend.

4. New markets

In March 2021, the 14th Five-year Plan Outlines the improvement of urban information model platform and operation management service platform, the construction of urban data resource system, into the construction of urban data brain, explore the construction of digital twin cities.

At present, urban digital twin has become an important technical means to support smart cities in China. According to data statistics, the number of public bidding related to urban digital twin in 2021 has reached more than 200, the amount of nearly ten billion, a significant increase from the previous year.

Core technology

1. Hardware facilities

  • Hardware equipment mainly refers to iot terminals, communication equipment, computing facilities, storage facilities and surveying and mapping equipment, which are used to support the perception, collection, transmission, calculation and storage of urban data.

  • FPGA (Programmable logic gate array) is further developed on the basis of PAL (programmable array logic), GAL (general array logic) and other programmable devices. It provides a large number of configurable basic logic units, RAM blocks and basic DSP blocks to meet the real-time requirements of digital twin for multi-channel and large amount of computation.

2. Entity mapping

  • Entity mapping is a multi-level and multi-dimensional mapping relationship between physical entities and virtual entities.

  • Through iot sensing, digital identification and other technologies, the physical entity and virtual mapping model form a one-to-one correspondence, close integration, two-way interaction relationship.

3. Data analysis

  • The computing service capability based on entity spatio-temporal data and spatio-temporal model, including spatio-temporal query, analysis, analysis, index and other multiple computing services.

  • Big data and intelligent analysis technology are used to dynamically interpret the running rules and inherent characteristics of spatio-temporal objects, so as to give positive feedback to virtual objects.

4. Multiple modeling

  • The implementation of digital twinning needs to be data-driven and model-driven. Data needs hardware calculation and data analysis, and model needs multidimensional modeling.

  • Multidimensional model is the carrier of physical object digitization. Based on the data of different levels, it integrates computer graphics, artificial intelligence, system dynamics and other disciplines and technologies to correspond the chaotic mass data in space, release the value of data resources, and realize the accurate restoration of digital twin to physical entities.

5. A visual

  • Visualization is an intuitive display window of a series of construction achievements of digital twin, and also an important technical means for users to realize the association between physical space and virtual space.

  • The wide application of game engine, 3D GIS technology, VR/AR/MR and other technologies has brought a variety of development for digital twin visualization, making the visualization from the traditional two-dimensional and three-dimensional static visualization to the current multi-technology integration of real-time dynamic full-space-time visualization.

6. Virtual interaction

  • Virtual and real interaction technology realizes two-way interaction between human and digital twin by integrating digital image processing, computer graphics, multimedia, AR, VR, MR and other technologies in an immersive and interactive way.

  • Based on AR, VR and MR technologies, cross-terminal and multi-modal interactions are realized through integrated displays such as digital sand table, large screen, circular screen, CAVE, DMS multi-touch, and VR experience.

7. Assistive technology

  • The realization of digital twin is also inseparable from important common supporting technologies such as basic network, 5G, big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cloud native, blockchain and Internet of Things.

  • In particular, the advantages of HIGH speed, large bandwidth and low delay of 5G communication technology promote the realization of digital twin, making future-oriented sensor connection and data transmission into practical applications.

V. Problems and challenges

1. The supply chain

At present, most domestic software technology companies use open source software to varying degrees, by modifying or using part of open source components for software development. And these are known high-risk open source software vulnerabilities, software supply chain information security risks serious.

2. Data support

Digital twin is inseparable from the support of data resources, but at present, data management, data sharing and exchange, digital infrastructure, dynamic data application, data security and other aspects of the existence of a certain degree of difficulties, these have brought certain challenges to the development of digital twin.

3) Industrial linkage

The industries and fields of digital twin are still in the stage of “government leading and enterprises fighting for themselves”, with insufficient industrial linkage.

6. Future trends

1. Urban management

Typical application scenarios of digital twin cities mainly include urban planning, urban construction, urban governance, smart parks, smart transportation, smart energy, etc.

Digital twin city is a new source of innovation and power in smart city construction, and will become the core base of smart city development in the new stage.

Health care

Increasingly large patient data sets are collected through hardware to refine patient-centered multidimensional models, and finally digital twins use these data sets to simulate different therapies, personalized or targeted approaches for patients.

3. Aerospace

Digital twinning is a technology first used by the United States in space flight simulation experiments and data analysis, and now with the development of Chinese spacecraft, rockets, satellites, space stations.

Digital twinning by establishing the digital twinning of aircraft, virtual digital testing and verification can be carried out on each component before it is actually processed, and design defects can be found and modified in time to avoid the high cost and long cycle brought by repeated iterative design.

4. Environmental protection

Through the digital twin technology, the simulation, analysis and prediction of the physical world can be realized quickly and effectively, and the analysis and simulation of aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, landscape ecology, environmental ecological science, life science, geogeography and other aspects can be carried out accurately.

5. Manufacturing

The digital twin system can effectively integrate and integrate heterogeneous industrial big data to form the data center, and support the aggregation and analysis of these real-time data and historical data to achieve accurate tracking, situation awareness and intelligent prediction of the whole production process, and effectively empower intelligent manufacturing resource allocation, production and other business systems.