Dynamic digital representations, or Digital Twins, are rapidly changing the way industries design, build and operate their products and processes. Gartner predicts, “by 2021, half of large industrial companies will use Digital Twins, resulting in those organizations gaining a 10 percent improvement in effectiveness.”
Powered by the Cloud, IoT, and AI, Digital Twins enrich complex systems like cars, wind turbines and buildings across their entire life cycles. A Digital Twin combines design, production and operational data. It allows assets to be tested before, during and after production, and across a wide range of environments.
IBM Research – Ireland is developing different Digital Twin technologies. These include:
In order to test complex IoT Systems, our researchers are using a virtual platform. This allows designers and developers of transportation services to investigate large-scale connected car services. They achieve this by merging simulations of large-scale automotive IoT deployments with proof-of-concept capabilities provided from real world vehicles. This platform is helping automotive partners design their services at scale while accelerating time to market.
The platform also allows drivers of actual vehicles to experience a large-scale connected scenario first hand. This combination of simulated and real-world data generates valuable insights. These insights are critical to user-centric development, resulting in reliable systems that are ready for the market. By embedding the data from actual vehicles into the digital environment, we can test the effects of assisted and autonomous driving in large-scale traffic simulations, in real time.