[JANUARY 2022] – When worlds collide, technologies explode. Sometimes. Such may be the case as the metaverse meets digital twins.
Different technologies depend on each other to mutually prosper. The iPhone required advances in display glass, haptics for touch input, and so on. As well, social and business trends need to align beneficially. The iPhone, used again as example, tapped into thriving cellular networks, capable cloud data centers and ubiquitous e-commerce solutions. Today, when technology pundits gather, they look for a similarly striking transformation.
So, when we try to measure the potential of one technology, we best consider the underlying advances occurring nearby. This is especially true of the metaverse.
No matter the final outcome, by renaming his company as “Meta,” Mark Zuckerberg effectively made the term top of mind in into public consciousness. But let’s be clear that underlying the metaverse are numerous technologies that rely on each others’ advances in order to prosper.
Chief among these are digital twins. These are virtual models that stand in as digital equivalents to real world processes. Underlying the digital twin are technologies at varied stages of maturity: electronic gaming AR and VR, AI, lidar and radar, IoT, Edge Computing, simulation and automation, and more.
Recently I talked with tech journalist and colleague George Lawton. Together we’d reviewed he’d accomplished on the topic at VentureBeat. The mission today: To get a gauge on digital twins. It seems digital twins could well form an environment that brings together disparate technologies now percolating under the banners of IoT and metaverse. A look at vendor strategies doesn’t dissuade this notion, as Lawton indicates. Here’s is a sample of topics discussed in the podcast above.
“I think it’s really the owner’s manual to the Internet of Things,” Lawton tells us. Vendors are talking about Edge, which is another way of saying they are “pushing the cloud down into the real world.”
“Microsoft, and Amazon and Google have pioneered workflows that automate the way you spin up these things,” he said. When you look at AI on the Edge, the ‘edge node’ is often a smart phone, he noted, but every machine will take on a role as an Edge node, if tech Futurists are right.
“I was surprised recently linvestigating what people are calling edge AI. What surprised me about that formulation is that it sort of speaks to this push from the cloud into the physical world,” said Lawton.
“Digital twins are going to be a cornerstone.” – Lawton on ESG, metaverse
Digital twins and the digital threads that connect them to workflows and each other will need time to mature. A lot of Silicon Valley’s hopes for a future metaverse will rise of fall as digital twin technology rolls out or stumbles.
“It might be a long way off before people find the best way of connecting the dots,” Lawton said. “But it’s one of the most promising aspects in the long term.”
It’s about bringing digital transformation out from just computer systems into the real world — into our cars and our factories and our buildings and our homes.
It is a promising underpinning for ESG as well, for pulling the carbon out of processes, tracking it, modeling it, and considering various trade-offs.
“Digital twins are going to be a cornerstone. It’s important to think about how to use it as a framework to extend into these different problems that we’re facing right now,” he said.
Related:
Digital Twin coverage on VentureBeat
22 digital twins trends that will shape 2022 – George Lawton December 30, 2021
Siemens and FDA demo digital twin factory line – George Lawton October 1, 2021
Nexar, Las Vegas digital twins direct traffic – George Lawton September 27, 2021
Lidar sensors cruise the metaverse – George Lawton September 13, 2021
Digital Twin coverage on IoT World Today
Precision of Digital Twin Data Models Hold Key to Success – Jack Vaughan January 4, 2021