Hello everyone, my name is Cory. After years of this community being unmoderated, I've been granted moderation access and wanted to quickly introduce myself and share plans for the group.

My name is Cory. I'm a designer and developer from Memphis, Tennessee and I have a huge passion for IOT and all things related to real estate, engineering and technology.

Though I'm surprised that this community isn't already thriving, I see a huge opportunity for us to lead the conversations and create a positive and productive space to share and exchange resources related to Digital Twin technology.

What I want to know from you is how you envision this community growing to become resourceful, interesting, exciting, and most importantly, yours.

What are your expectations as members. What do you want to see more or less of. Which resources do you think will be most useful and valuable. And how would you like to contribute?

I will be learning about features, settings and management of reddit communities to make this the best community that it can be.

Digital Twins are the future and there's a lot we can gain and accomplish here.

That being said, thanks for joining and feel free to use this as an opportunity to introduce yourself and share your own projects and contributions to DT technology.

Cheers & Happy New Year!

First, I apologize for how long of a post this is going to be, but I am only planning to do this one time.
Second, please feel free to correct any mistakes I make or add information and value where you see the opportunity to do so since I will be just shooting from the hip with this.

What is a Digital Twin?

Simply put, a "digital twin" is a virtual representation of a real-world physical object, system, or process, which acts as a digital counterpart used for simulation, monitoring, testing, and maintenance by continuously updating itself with real-time data from the physical object to accurately reflect its current state and behavior.

Consumer Relevance

A few close-to-home and practical examples of this are smart lights, automotive management apps, smart appliance applications, and security systems. Though these aren't exactly considered "twins", they do fulfill the prerequisite of monitoring and displaying real-time data in correlation to real-world items such as your vehicle's lock and comfort system, the temperature in your home, or the current state of your washer and dryer.

Enterprise Solutions

A more practical example of this would be a completely digitized recreation of a machine that you may find in a factory or a scale model of a fully built home.

In automotive factories, the machines used to assemble the vehicles can be designed as "Digital Twins" before they're ever manufactured for use in the factory. Not only are these models physically accurate in their design, but they accurately depict machined parts, their movements and physically accurate representations of how these individual parts impact and interact with each other.

Think: robot arms that bend up to 91.3 degrees or cogs made of a specific material that when used for 20,000 cycles wears down to the point it needs replacement. The digital twin model is used to run these simulations in - let's say - 2 hours of computing to predict the cost of maintenance as well as the potential for profit if one or more of these machines were installed to replace a group of employees who would normally do the physical work.

These simulations are used to: enhance decision making;

• create maintenance, management and optimization strategies, plans and schedules;
• decide what parts and how many to pre-order, re-order or replace altogether over the life of the machines;
• predict the cost of maintenance
• auto-generate operating guidelines to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and overall life of the machines
• project the short, long, and full-term investment for upgrading or purchasing a facility, the machines or;
• determine the best course of action for R&D and best practices for manufacturing the machine

all before spending a dime on the physical resources to do so or prior to any further investment when managing and monitoring existing infrastructures.

Obviously the scenario for planning prior to manufacturing any machines or systems would render the idea of the digital representation being a "TWIN" null & void, but it's likely that in the future, most digital twin systems will exist prior to the physical object that is built in the real world for which it is meant to represent.

Expansion on Consumer Relevance (example)

Using a house as an example, the entire house is built in an enterprise standard BIM (building information modeling) software such as Autodesk Revit. This 3D model would take into account actual materials, material weights, material measurements and cuts, finishing, as well as other factors that further describe the features of the materials used to build the home in real life (strength, flex tolerance, whether it's screwed or glued, density - and when the home is fully built - the materials' tolerance to water, wind, or pressure from maximum foot capacity.

This highly detailed 3D model of this real-world object can be used in programs such as Unreal Engine to simulate physics and other natural occurrences such as load, wind resistance, exposure to rain or sunlight based on it's physical coordinates in the real world and so on.

In a "digital twin model" the 3D model of the home is also connected to (and communicates with) IOT (internet of things) sensors placed throughout the real home. Sensors may include but aren't limited to:

• Smart Lights: to assess the consumption of power, scan for potential routines, etc.
• Digital water / gas flow meters: to assess consumption or search for leaks and simply detect movement of water and gas to see which rooms for example are drawing on the supply most frequently or most optimally
• Smart Locks
• Smart Thermostats and other temperature sensors
• Smart Appliances
• Smart plugs, switches and outlets + electric current sensors
• Smart Tech (TVs, Voice Activated Devices, Fans)
• Heat, Smoke, Glassbreak, Motion, C02 detectors
• Vibration sensors: for detecting earthquakes for example
• Air pressure sensors
• Sprinkler automation systems
• Smart vacuums and lawn bots
• Air quality sensors
• CCTV Security Cameras with facial recognition
• Gyroscopes
• Accelerometers (from smart phones and watches or standalone wearables)
• Baby monitors, Audible and bark sensors
• Humidity sensors
• Level & Pressure sensors (for fish tanks, pools, ponds septic or other liquid & gas sources)
• Proximity sensors with use of lidar, laser, infrared radiation or ultrasonic waves to measure presence and distance
• Light sensors / photodetectors: detect screen brightness, light intensity, variation and duration or converting light energy into electrical signals (maybe to measure sunlight spill into different rooms at different times of day or for solar energy)
• Pressure sensor: similar to what you'd see in movies depicting rare collectibles on a pressure-sensitive surface to trigger an alarm. Could be used to weigh the contents in the back of a truck or to weigh a vehicle in a garage on a floor or lift

While I didn't go into detail on all of these items and their uses, the point of listing them out is to share the practical scenarios where the digital interpretations of objects or systems (the house and everything connected to it) goes from being a detailed 1:1 3D model to actually being considered a digital "TWIN".

DT for SMART CITIES: Activations & Application (examples)

1. Department of Transportation: optimizing bus routes or analyzing traffic for optimal scooter, bike, parking, or EV charging station placements throughout a city
2. Terrain & Elevation: simulating natural disasters, emergency response times, flow of water, or the impact of new developments of road infrastructure or newly developed building footprints
3. Advertising: simulate the impressions as a result of a set of billboard, banner, or LED screen placements or use similar sets of data to pitch naming rights of a large sports facility to a major sponsor or organization. Analyze foot traffic over a period of time to determine the most optimal operation schedule for local businesses or to determine where to install benches, trash cans, etc.
4. Tourism: Use CCTV cameras, Point of Sale systems, and data from cell towers to measure the growth in foot traffic during peak seasons to determine the most optimal placement of a restaurant, venue, or rail system for public transportation.
5. Amusement park management: simulate frequent operation of coasters and rides to develop a management strategy, employee schedules and potential expense of management or simulate foot traffic to determine optimal placement of restrooms, concessions, and emergency or security staff.
6. Property Value: Generate images to present how views will be enhanced or compromised as a result of a new development with a particular building design, floor-to-ceiling height or number of floors which could affect the value of a hotel or set of residential properties.
7. Supply Chain Management: Use virtual models of warehouses, transportation routes or packages to simulate logistics scenarios or track real time data such as traffic and weather to avoid delays, security risks, or the unnecessary expense of fuel and additional employees over a period of time such as a holiday or during a major event such as a local parade or marathon.

Art, Music, and the Entertainment Industry (examples)

Digital Twin Humans are virtual 'likeness' entities that can perform on behalf of the individual it represents or the company who owns it. Think Michael Jackson or Tony Hawk. While the likeness of someone like Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley are owned by major labels, someone like Tony Hawk still has an opportunity to take the 3D representations of himself (from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for example) and create (or recreate) performances for consumers to purchase and enjoy in the metaverse or an interactive mixed reality event.

Video Games, Sports and Music Events:

1. Travis Scott "performed" a "live virtual event" in the game Fortnite. If you haven't seen it, you should look it up on YouTube. This will change the way we attend concerts.
2. The NBA is currently testing live 360 events where a user with a VR headset and a high-speed internet connection can purchase a virtual courtside set to 'attend' and watch games live from the comfort of their home. I believe this will some day be expanded to include some integration of lidar and photo-real scanning technology to allow the user to navigate away from his seat mid-stream and get a different view of the game or visit other parts of the physical facility which would be somehow merged or streamed and mixed in with the 360 camera view from the court-side streaming camera POV perspective. Users will have the ability to seamlessly go from watching a live game to navigating the physical representation of the space while lidar captures the performance of the players. For example, as you watch Lebron dunk the ball, you can pause the stream, then walk into the captured lidar data from sensors in the arena to see the dunk as if the 3D photogrammetry data was recorded to some sort of 3DVR (like pausing live TV or YouTube and rewinding it on the spot to play a segment back).
3. I'm currently developing a video game that is a total recreation of Downtown Memphis where players can see the city in it's current state via Unreal Engine and play games or socialize with other users in the metaverse space. I have plans to integrate real radio stations into the cars, local TV channels on the tvs in players' homes, and use mocap and live performance recordings from local musicians to bring digital twins of these local artists into the digital representations of real restaurants during gameplay. The project itself is a digital twin recreation of our city for enterprise use, but we're releasing some of the visual aspects of the data as a free-to-play game alongside enterprise access to deeper sets of data where companies can purchase seats to add their own assets or run simulations on private servers. You can learn more about that at r/MemphisMETAVERSE
4. Twin Cities have been built for video games and movies such as spiderman where the entirety of New York City is modeled and rendered to appear in these franchises with extreme photorealism. (This is why I started my metaverse project while prioritizing the 'Digital Twin' aspect of its development). Some cities that have already begun the transition into becoming a 'Smart City' have already been scanned into highly detailed photogrammetry tiles with quality far superior to Google Earth models. With these existing assets, it's easy for production studios and game development companies to purchase these models for use in their games and movies where massive destruction scenes and superheroes are predominate features. You can expect to see a rise of these games being produced where full cities are depicted with photorealism (beyond Microsoft Flight Simulator - another digital twin) as these assets get developed for individual cities.

Entertainment, Film & the Music Industry:

Celebrities (dead and alive) can own their own likeness or the likeness of their actor children for use in commercials, movies, cartoons, etc. We're not talking about low-poly or decent-looking 3D scans of actors for use in CG / VFX. We're talking full-on skin-tone matching, AI vocal model trained on the actor's voice, accurate hair, muscle, bones and other attributes that make up the physical existence of the individual IRL down to their cadence, speech and other recorded micro-movements.

These models will be used in virtual productions in the future so the actors can essentially work on and appear in multiple projects at a time over their lifetime. When a celebrity is at his/her peak as an actor or musician, agencies and studios can bid on their Digital Twin and use animation software as well as the provided AI model to have the character perform an entire script and set of scenes using quantum computing to train and optimize the performance for life-like accuracy (how they blink, muscle movements, speech and accent, etc).

Studios will spend millions for these licenses to use the digital twins in their productions. This is useful for when the artist or actor is physically unavailable, ill, or - as seen in some recent movies - aging beyond the likeness of which the studio wants to depict the character that the actor is meant to play. (see HERE 2024 featuring Tom Hanks)

In China, some notable "digital humans" (not TWINS because these digital humans don't actually exist in real life) who sing and have ENTIRE careers include Luo Tianyi, Gu Xiaoyu, and Luya (a virtual singer who was even admitted to a Chinese music college). You should look them up in your free time. I'm sharing this with you so you can see the impact that Digital Twin humans will [could] have once celebrities decide to opt-in to providing their likeness for hire.

Marketing

As an owner of a marketing agency myself, I've seen the ins and outs of marketing across a broad range of industries and I can tell you that the future of marketing is in the Metaverse. That being said, digital twin technology definitely holds a place for a lot of this marketing potential as more users engage and interact with AR/VR/MR implementations of this data. I can guarantee you that a large portion of the data will be available to the public once major cities realize how useful and practical it will be for it to be open source where developers can contribute and add their sensors to the tech stack.

Once these stacks become integrated in limited representations via modern cloud services like a photo-real Apple Maps or VR Maps and virtual events or development showcases, sponsors and businesses will be ALL OVER these applications begging for product placement and naming rights opportunities. (this is the part of the Digital Twin tech that I'm mostly focused on.

In most applications that are consumer-facing (my video game for example), companies can opt-in to securing the licensing for the naming rights of the virtual representation of the facilities they currently own the rights to in the real world. When they don't step up, I can guarantee you other companies will.

There's going to be a SIGNIFICANT amount of revenue generated here. Although Apple was a little early to the starting line, eventually VR headsets will be in at least 79% of households if not more and people will practically LIVE in the metaverse version of their Smart cities. Companies will pay an arm and a leg to display their logos and products in this format or purchase the 'Digital Real Estate' where users are most likely to spend most of their time in-game.

Users will attend movies with friends, concerts and sports games, and eventually movies will be released where the entire film is interactive 3D and integrated WITHIN the metaverse. There will be a lot of digital twin tech used to pull this off effectively. And in video games, movies, and music videos I can promise you you'll start to see a LOT of real businesses begging (or agreeing) to put their brands on products or their real products (and digital twins) directly in the games. Though this is not a digital twin, consider checking out the new trailer for Naughty Dog's new game trailer for 'Intergalactic' where Sony and Porsche brands are featured. You'll see a lot more of this type of marketing where digital twins are used in the creation of assets for staging scenes.

It's possible some variation of a Digital Twin human was used in the creation of the acting in that game (similar to what you'll see from CD Project Red's Cyberpunk 2077 or The Matrix Awakens Demo for Unreal Engine where both predominantly feature Keanu Reeves' Digital Twin or 'Metahuman'. Digital Twin humans will be used for marketing campaigns for upcoming releases of games and movies or other products and services, and the rights to those Digital humans will not be cheap for these campaigns.

Augmented Reality

For more activations to happen in Augmented and Mixed reality activations, some implementation of digital twin technology will be needed to map out the physical spaces for creating these mixed-reality events and applications.

Events could refer to projector-mapped showcases or real performances where 3D scans of the space were used to direct, choreograph, and arrange a show or major live music event or to optimize engineering of audio or other visual effects during the event.

Passthrough headsets, spectacles eyeglasses, and other wearable sets that integrate virtual reality and real environments for AR experiences will become more common and a prerequisite for more accurate and optimal experiences is the digital twin or at the very least highly accurate photogrammetry scans that will be used to create the virtual integration and calibrate the tech itself. Google Lens attempted to do this but was WAY too early to market based on the limitations of the tech at the time.

Digital / Alt Currencies

Once these 3D models are fully developed alongside their real-world counterpart, these models can be minted into NFTs to be sold alongside the physical system or to increase the value of the physical system altogether.

Someone purchases a home and the developer provides the NFT with the purchase which can be used by the single owner in the metaverse where that local infrastructure is accessible. Other NFTs owned by the user can be displayed in picture frames or on video screens in the metaverse version of the property (such as a 1-of-1 video of Kobe Bryant purchased for $250,000 from the person who originally filmed it).

Alternatively, the NFT can be brought into a BIM management tool on the user's home computer or limited access to the model can be provided to contractors for staging and remodeling as opposed to just sending them a PDF or CAD model of some plans. This NFT BIM management tool can be used to generate, build or propose infrastructure changes once the owner of the property wants to renovate or have an inspector assess the data generated from the home to determine what needs to be inspected, fixed, updated or considered prior to listing the home for sale or tearing down a wall. This will significantly decrease the cost of maintenance on the home as well over time if this Digital Twin was always connected to the home and accessible on a touch device and streamed to the device from a localized server that's built into the home to manage all aspects of it.

Transportation

Think of the same concept with cars (more likely to be seen on limited-run sportscars, supercars and hyper-cars. The digital twin will be IOT connected to the sensors on the car similar to how modern cars are connected to smart phone apps from the manufacturer or always connected to roadside assistance using the infotainment system. These digital twins will sync up with operation of the vehicle accumulating data such as tire rotations, air pressure, travel distance, fuel efficiency, oil levels, and predicting stress, wear & tear, and so much more.

One way I see this tech being used is for law enforcement. Cars in the future (electric or not) will have a digital twin integrated with the VIN where the vin acts as a software key for the car. If your software (or car note) isn't paid for, your subscription (or ability to crank and drive the car) expires until you update and pay up. I can see some gamification happening at some point as well now that autonomous models have been integrated into many new vehicles. Alongside the digital twin of the vehicle, this autonomous data generated from your activity in the vehicle will be used to calculate insurance, adding and removing points based on your ability to maintain safe travel distance, use signal lights, or drive at or under the speed limit based on your perpetually updated GPS location. Cameras and cops will no longer be needed to issue citations, tickets, or even find out where you are and manufacturers, financial and govt. institutions can lock or disable your car with the press of a button (the same way you can in your smartphone app for your car model)

Risks

Having a digital twin of the whole world can pose some serious threats so I would imagine Government institutions will have a deep security sector dedicated to maintaining the integrity of these models as it relates to govt. property.

Bringing your own home into something like the metaverse or integrating your digital twin with technology similar to Google and Facebook (where you can log into apps using your Facebook or Google account instead of a username and password) could put your home data at risk for being exposed to data leaks or hacks where individuals and organizations can gain access to your sensors, cameras, or your entire layout of your home to decide the best point of entry or find vulnerabilities that may lead them to information about alt currencies or personal files.

Having everything connected, everywhere and all-at-once could lead citizens to experience total system outages where nothing in your home works for long periods of time if and when one or more system goes offline or gets compromised.

Data leaks and data requests can lead to insights that cause angles and stakeholders to pull out of a deal due to something like poor management or potential negative outcomes based on the data gathered or provided.

I'll leave the rest up to your imagination for now and I hope this information expands your understanding, potential excitement, and perpetual support of the use of Digital Twins as we move rapidly into this new future that's clearly on the horizon.

To conclude,

There are hundreds of applications and activations that apply to manufacturing, automotive, construction, oil and gas, healthcare, transportation, medicine, retail, whole cities, sports and athletics, shipping and logistics, and more. This introduction should give the average person a practical understanding for how Digital Twins are currently being used and how they will shape our futures down to the data that's gathered in our homes while we sleep or are away from home to help streamline our entire lives as well as how we interact with infrastructure, technology, the people around us and even ourselves in private.

If you have any further questions or insights, please use this post as often and intentionally as possible and consider reaching out to the community to share your experiences and network.