Digital Twins: From Engineering to Science
Invited lecture, Distinguished Lecture Series, Dept. of Informatics, University of Bergen
Abstract
Digital twins are emerging as an engineering paradigm to build software centred around models of physical objects or processes, with very diverse application domains. The purpose of a digital twin is to understand, predict and act on the behaviour of these physical systems. In engineering, the use of digital twins profoundly changes the management of the entire product lifecycle, from design to manufacturing and operations, because the digital twins adapt in response to the evolution of their physical counterpart. In this talk, we discuss digital twins from the perspective of behavioural models. We share some ideas about model evolution in digital twins from this perspective, tell you about our current research activities on digital twins at the University of Oslo, and discuss some ensuing research challenges at the intersection of formal methods and software engineering.
Abstract
Digital twins are emerging as an engineering
discipline to build virtual representations of physical objects or
processes. In engineering, the use of digital twins profoundly changes
the entire product lifecycle management, from design, to manufacturing
to service and operations, because the digital twins adapt in response
to the evolution of their physical counterpart. Digital twins can
evolve continuously based on streams of observations of the physical
system, for example from sensors that connect the physical system to
the digital twin in near real-time.
In this talk, we move from the engineering of digital twins to the science of digital twins. We consider basic concepts of digital twins, present some examples of how we are working with them in research, and discuss scientific challenges related to digital twins.
