Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

The concept of "Metaverse" comes from Neil Stephenson's 1992 science fiction Avalanche. The novel depicts a meta-universe of digital space, where people use digital "Avatar" to communicate with each other.

From the description in the novel, we can see that the meta-universe is essentially a virtual and digital process of the real world. in order to realize the meta-universe in reality, we need to expand the three technologies: reality technology, digital twin and block chain.

Here, the document will introduce you to the digital twin (Digital Twin) technology.

01. The development of digital twins

The concept of origin digital twins originated in the 1970s, when NASA,National Aeronautics and Space Administration used two identical spacecraft, one of which was launched into outer space on a space mission and the other left on Earth to assist engineers in analyzing and dealing with a variety of failure scenarios in space.

In 2002, Michael Grieves, a professor at the University of Michigan, put forward a conceptual model similar to digital twinning in a lecture on product life cycle management.

In 2010, NASA used the concept of digital twins in its technology roadmap.

In 2011, a research lab staff mentioned the concept of body digital twins (Airframe Digital Twin) in a speech.

After 2015, countries around the world have begun to study how to apply digital twins to the industrial Internet.

From 2016 to 2018, Gartner listed digital twinning as one of the top ten strategic scientific and technological development trends for three consecutive years.

02. Digital Twin Technology VS Simulation Technology?

The document gentleman looked at this paragraph with a confused look on his face and unconsciously touched his little head.

To put it simply, digital twin is a technology to construct a digital model (digital twin) which is completely equivalent to the composition, characteristics, function and performance of physical entities and can be simulated and optimized in virtual space.

Does such an introduction instantly feel that digital twins are not as classy as they sound at first, and even think: Hey, isn't this three-dimensional modeling with CAD software on a computer?

Of course, this is not the case. The difference between the two is that digital twins are real-time and closed-loop, which simulation technology does not have.

Real-time: the digital twin is consistent with the physical entity in the whole life cycle, and can mirror the real-time running state of the physical object with high fidelity. It's like a world in the mirror where people and objects imitate you and your surroundings 24 hours a day.

Closed loop: digital twins can not only receive data from physical entities, but also feed back the results of their simulation and deduction to physical entities, thus helping users to optimize and make decisions on physical entities. realize the closed-loop decision optimization function of physical entity.

Just like going to the hospital for a physical examination, the examination equipment monitors and examines the sick site of the patient, and finally the examination equipment feeds back the analysis and judgment results to the doctor and the patient, and the doctor formulates and implements the treatment plan based on the examination result. of course, unlike physical examination, the deduction results of digital twins can be fed back and presented directly in the physical entity.

Does it sound so magnificent and classy?

In digital twins, simulation technology is a technology used to build models and simulate.

03. The application of digital twins the application of digital twins can be said to be "a thousand industries", involving intelligent manufacturing, intelligent health, smart cities, smart energy and other fields.

In addition to the above-mentioned fields, digital twin technology is also used in the digital twin network in the communication field.

Digital Twin Network (DTN,Digital Twin Network) is defined in "Digital Twin Network (DTN) White Paper 2021": it is a network system that creates virtual twins of physical network entities digitally and can interact with physical network entities in real time.

The advantages of digital twin networks over traditional communication networks:

Visualization reflects the status of the network in real time.

The fault goes back to the past.

Adjust and optimize network resources.

The network optimization scheme is simulated, verified and deployed in the physical network.

According to the advantages of the digital twin network, the document makes a calculation and predicts the possible future application scenarios of the digital twin network:

Realize intention network based on digital twin network: translation and verification, intention dynamic guarantee / optimization and other functions in intention network can be realized based on the mapping model of digital twin network to guarantee the user intention from the network application layer in real time. For more information about the intention network, please jump to the "camp" intention network.

Visual network topology management: based on the mapping model of digital twin network, the virtual topology corresponding to physical network entity is generated, and the multi-dimensional visualization of topology is realized.

Fault management closed loop: fault management closed loop can automatically and accurately identify and quickly locate the root cause of network fault, complete fault repair and verification, simulate and verify the fault handling scheme in the fault closed loop, and output the reliability of the scheme. can be achieved through the digital twin network.

04. Challenges and development trends of digital twinning at present, more and more enterprises are widely using digital twin technology, but they are still faced with uneven levels of data collection capabilities in the industry, lack of effective perception of key data, low utilization rate of collected data, lack of data association and other problems. In the long run, it is necessary to give full play to the full value of digital twin technology. It is necessary to integrate all the systems and data in the whole ecosystem of digital twinning, which is the development trend of digital twinning technology.

Digital twinning is composed of basic support layer, data interaction layer, model construction layer and simulation analysis layer, common application layer and industry application layer. From the various information technologies included in the digital twin ecosystem, we can feel that the future is really a "meta-universe".

Note: this picture is from the basic support layer of "China Institute of Electronic Technology Standardization: digital Twin Application White Paper 2020": terminal equipment used to collect data and send it to the network end.

Data interaction layer: software and platform that provides support for the construction of digital twins.

Model construction layer and simulation analysis layer: establish a digital model with physical laws and mechanisms for digital twins.

Common application layer: used to support the lifecycle management of physical entities.

Industry application layer: various application services of digital twin technology in various fields according to the needs of the industry.

05. Summarize that digital twin technology currently has great development prospects in various industries, and is the basis for the realization of smart medicine, smart city, smart manufacturing, and intelligent network. It is believed that mature digital twin technology, with the blessing of big data, cloud computing, 5G network, Internet of things and other technologies, will play an important role in realizing the vision of "meta-universe" one day in the future.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ZTE documents (ID:ztedoc)

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