Digital twin enhanced tribo-test service

Tribo-tests play a crucial role in the evaluation of the material performance of tribo-pairs. Traditionally, tribo-tests are performed onsite and tightly depend on experienced human operators. However, some public health emergencies such as covid-19 have a substantial impact on daily human life, including product and service systems. Therefore, this chapter aims to develop a new tribo-test service pattern, that is, digital twin enhanced remote tribo-test. A digital twin enhanced tribo-test service framework is proposed, which includes the modeling stage and the application stage of tribo-test service. A case study is presented to showcase how to implement the proposed framework. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Towards Digital Twin Maintenance Management of Health Facilities in Nigeria: The Need for Maintenance Documentation

The COVID-19 pandemic that recently broke forth revealed the waning state of a considerable number of healthcare facilities, especially in unindustrialized territories. This is of great concern, and it has become pertinent to identify determinants of efficient maintenance management in developing countries. There is an inefficient maintenance management of hospital buildings due to a low level of maintenance documentation, which otherwise would have facilitated the adoption of digital twin (DT) technology. The existing maintenance management frameworks and models have not explored and evaluated maintenance documentation as an all-inclusive construct. Hence, this study was aimed at emphasizing the significance of maintenance documentation for its adoption as one of the main determinants of efficient maintenance management, with a view to attaining the DT maintenance management of hospital buildings in Nigeria. After a theoretical review on existing studies around documentation, the software documentation concept was used to conceptualise this observed gap in maintenance management models for public hospital buildings in developing countries. This critical review, which forms part of an ongoing study, asserts that maintenance documentation is a major construct for efficient maintenance management and a prerequisite for the adoption of DT in the management of healthcare constructed facilities in developing countries.

Modeling SARS-CoV-2 True Infections in Catalonia through a Digital Twin

A dynamic view of the evolution of the infections of SARS-CoV-2 in Catalonia using a Digital Twin approach that forecasts the true infection curve is presented. The forecast model incorporates the vaccination process, the confinement, and the detection rate, and virtually allows to consider any nonpharmaceutical intervention, enabling to understand their effects on the disease's containment while forecasting the trend of the pandemic. A continuous validation process of the model is performed using real data and an optimization model that automatically provides information regarding the effects of the containment actions on the population. To simplify this validation process, a formal graphical language that simplifies the interaction with the different specialists and an easy modification of the model parameters are used. The Digital Twin of the pandemic in Catalonia provides a forecast of the future trend of the SARS-CoV-2 spread and information regarding the true cases and effectiveness of the NPIs to control the SARS-CoV-2 spread over the population. This approach can be applied easily to other regions and can become an excellent tool for decision-making. © 2023 The Authors. Advanced Theory and Simulations published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.

A Review on Digital Twin Technology in Healthcare

Digital twin technology is the union of three systems - the physical, the virtual and the interconnecting link layer. It acts as a replica and provides real-time representation of real-world physical objects in a virtual format. Digital twins are promising when applied in healthcare. This brief review gives a schematic overview of the current state of digital twin, specifically in the healthcare industry with gaps to overcome the challenges in building smart healthcare ecosystem. A concise synthesis of the following aspects of digital twin provides a cohesive whole in this paper: new capabilities and functions of the digital twin in healthcare, technologies that support digital twins, with its applications. This study motivated by the current COVID-19 pandemic, focuses on the application of the Digital Twin technology in healthcare. © 2023 IEEE.

Developing DELPHI expert consensus rules for a digital twin model of acute stroke care in the neuro critical care unit.

INTRODUCTION: Digital twins, a form of artificial intelligence, are virtual representations of the physical world. In the past 20 years, digital twins have been utilized to track wind turbines' operations, monitor spacecraft's status, and even create a model of the Earth for climate research. While digital twins hold much promise for the neurocritical care unit, the question remains on how to best establish the rules that govern these models. This model will expand on our group's existing digital twin model for the treatment of sepsis. METHODS: The authors of this project collaborated to create a Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG) and an initial series of 20 DELPHI statements, each with six accompanying sub-statements that captured the pathophysiology surrounding the management of acute ischemic strokes in the practice of Neurocritical Care (NCC). Agreement from a panel of 18 experts in the field of NCC was collected through a 7-point Likert scale with consensus defined a-priori by ≥ 80% selection of a 6 ("agree") or 7 ("strongly agree"). The endpoint of the study was defined as the completion of three separate rounds of DELPHI consensus. DELPHI statements that had met consensus would not be included in subsequent rounds of DELPHI consensus. The authors refined DELPHI statements that did not reach consensus with the guidance of de-identified expert comments for subsequent rounds of DELPHI. All DELPHI statements that reached consensus by the end of three rounds of DELPHI consensus would go on to be used to inform the construction of the digital twin model. RESULTS: After the completion of three rounds of DELPHI, 93 (77.5%) statements reached consensus, 11 (9.2%) statements were excluded, and 16 (13.3%) statements did not reach a consensus of the original 120 DELPHI statements. CONCLUSION: This descriptive study demonstrates the use of the DELPHI process to generate consensus among experts and establish a set of rules for the development of a digital twin model for use in the neurologic ICU. Compared to associative models of AI, which develop rules based on finding associations in datasets, digital twin AI created by the DELPHI process are easily interpretable models based on a current understanding of underlying physiology.

Digital twin for healthy indoor environment: A vision for the post-pandemic era

Indoor environment has significant impacts on human health as people spend 90% of their time indoors. The COVID-19 pandemic and the increased public health awareness have further elevated the urgency for cultivating and maintaining a healthy indoor environment. The advancement in emerging digital twin technologies including building information modeling (BIM), Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, and smart control have led to new opportunities for building design and operation. Despite the numerous studies on developing methods for creating digital twins and enabling new functionalities and services in smart building management, very few have focused on the health of indoor environment. There is a critical need for understanding and envisaging how digital twin paradigms can be geared towards healthy indoor environment. Therefore, this study reviews the techniques for developing digital twins and discusses how the techniques can be customized to contribute to public health. Specifically, the current applications of BIM, IoT sensing, data analytics, and smart building control technologies for building digital twins are reviewed, and the knowledge gaps and limitations are discussed to guide future research for improving environmental and occupant health. Moreover, this paper elaborates a vision for future research on integrated digital twins for a healthy indoor environment with special considerations of the above four emerging techniques and issues. This review contributes to the body of knowledge by advocating for the consideration of health in digital twin modeling and smart building services and presenting the research roadmap for digital twin-enabled healthy indoor environment.

Evaluation and Analysis of Production Processes Affected by Unmeasured Situations: Case Study of a Metal Processing Company

As the unpredicted situations can occur anytime, the production should be prepared to maintain the same pace as always. The pandemic of 2019 proved that proper production processes are vital. A case study was made in a metal processing company to examine how the workflow has changed after the implementation of virus prevention rules. Welding operation of metal furniture leg was observed and calculations presented - 115 minutes are wasted due to additional daily tasks caused by prevention of the pandemic. The recommendations were described and 160 minutes could be saved in accordance with them. The robotization of processes and DSS implementation were presented.

Learning impact of recent ICT advances based on virtual reality IoT sensors in a metaverse environment

Avatars of real individuals can be found all around the Metaverse. It has been nicknamed the "next big bang” for the Indian EdTech market, which some experts predict will reach $30 billion by 2032. Technology permeates 21st-century education, whether it is through academic programming, hands-on technical instruction, or concepts taught in classrooms and institutions. Virtual reality in the Indian educational system is still a topic of study. There isn't much research on virtual reality in education. Since women are now actively functioning as leaders and outperforming men in many spheres of life worldwide, women's empowerment is India's most powerful tool for growth. The lady governors and the countries led by these incredible women are bearing the load and pushing on alone in the struggle wherever it is needed, while the entire world holds its breath and prays every day for an unbelievable escape from the COVID-19 pandemic. Various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seek to improve women's lives and provide them with self-sufficiency training. The government is likewise concerned about this issue and has established a number of programs to assist women. Information and communication technology (ICT) is significant in this context. ICT has improved the security, knowledge, education, employability, confidence, and popularity of women. The significance of ICT for the empowerment of women is highlighted in this study. To illuminate the various facets of ICT's impact on society, various examples have been addressed. Because of ICT, new generations of women all over the globe have defied all expectations and proven themselves in every aspect of life, even the most complicated and time-consuming realm of enterprise. In this regard, ICT may possibly become a magic wand for improving women's current situations. In this research, the eight factors that influence how ICT affects rural women's empowerment were found.

A framework for manufacturing system reconfiguration and optimisation utilising digital twins and modular artificial intelligence

Digital twins and artificial intelligence have shown promise for improving the robustness, responsiveness, and productivity of industrial systems. However, traditional digital twin approaches are often only employed to augment single, static systems to optimise a particular process. This article presents a paradigm for combining digital twins and modular artificial intelligence algorithms to dynamically reconfigure manufacturing systems, including the layout, process parameters, and operation times of numerous assets to allow system decision -making in response to changing customer or market needs. A knowledge graph has been used as the enabler for this system-level decision-making. A simulation environment has been constructed to replicate the manufacturing process, with the example here of an industrial robotic manufacturing cell. The simulation environment is connected to a data pipeline and an application programming interface to assist the integration of multiple artificial intelligence methods. These methods are used to improve system decision-making and optimise the configuration of a manufacturing system to maximise user-selectable key performance indicators. In contrast to previous research, this framework incorporates artificial intelligence for decision -making and production line optimisation to provide a framework that can be used for a wide variety of manufacturing applications. The framework has been applied and validated in a real use case, with the automatic reconfiguration resulting in a process time improvement of approximately 10%.

The integration of digital twin and serious game framework for new normal virtual urban exploration and social interaction

COVID-19 has disconnected humanity, reduced social interaction in physical urban areas, and led to the new normal, which describes the anticipated changes in human life and professionals due to the impact of the pandemic. In addition, as part of digital transformation, the post-pandemic New Normal includes accelerating digital solutions and new standards for virtual urban exploration and planning. This study applies the concept of digital twin and serious game design and uses Minecraft, a game-based platform that inspires creative, inclusive learning through play, for virtual urban exploration and the development of social interaction among participants. Dadaocheng, a historical area of Taipei city, is then studied as a case study with the Geoboxers application to develop the prototype for a co-creation experiment in Minecraft. The prototype development and the results of the experiment are then used in the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) method to evaluate a set of influential criteria proposed in this study through pairwise comparisons by expert panelists. The results of the AHP analysis reveal users' simultaneous preferences for urban planning and social interaction with urban characteristics (22.14%), urban exploration (12.29%), and 3D models (11.97%). Subsequently, the research results showed a need to promote the integration of digital twins and serious game applications as digital tools for urban exploration and social interaction, increasing post-pandemic virtual urban planning and applying new urban design techniques. This study also contributes to the acceleration of digital transformation in urban planning and management. © 2023 The Authors

Scenarios for digital twin deployment in healthcare facilities management

Purpose: This paper aims to focus on identifying key health-care issues amenable to digital twin (DT) approach. It starts with a description of the concept and enabling technologies of a DT and then discusses potential applications of DT solutions in healthcare facilities management (FM) using four different scenarios. The scenario planning focused on monitoring and controlling the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system in real-time;monitoring indoor air quality (IAQ) to monitor the performance of medical equipment;monitoring and tracking pulsed light for SARS-Cov-2;and monitoring the performance of medical equipment affected by radio frequency interference (RFI). Design/methodology/approach: The importance of a healthcare facility, its systems and equipment necessitates an effective FM practice. However, the FM practices adopted have several areas for improvement, including the lack of effective real-time updates on performance status, asset tracking, bi-directional coordination of changes in the physical facilities and the computational resources that support and monitor them. Consequently, there is a need for more intelligent and holistic FM systems. We propose a DT which possesses the key features, such as real-time updates and bi-directional coordination, which can address the shortcomings in healthcare FM. DT represents a virtual model of a physical component and replicates the physical data and behavior in all instances. The replication is attained using sensors to obtain data from the physical component and replicating the physical component's behavior through data analysis and simulation. This paper focused on identifying key healthcare issues amenable to DT approach. It starts with a description of the concept and enabling technologies of a DT and then discusses potential applications of DT solutions in healthcare FM using four different scenarios. Findings: The scenarios were validated by industry experts and concluded that the scenarios offer significant potential benefits for the deployment of DT in healthcare FM such as monitoring facilities' performance in real-time and improving visualization by integrating the 3D model. Research limitations/implications: In addition to inadequate literature addressing healthcare FM, the study was also limited to one of the healthcare facilities of a large public university, and the scope of the study was limited to IAQ including pressure, relative humidity, carbon dioxide and temperature. Additionally, the study showed the potential benefits of DT application in healthcare FM using various scenarios that DT experts validated. Practical implications: The study shows the practical implication using the various validated scenarios and identified enabling technologies. The combination and implementation of those mentioned above would create a system that can effectively help manage facilities and improve facilities' performances. Social implications: The only identifiable social solution is that the proposed system in this study can manually be overridden to prevent absolute autonomous control of the smart system in cases when needed. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the only study that has addressed healthcare FM using the DT approach. This research is an excerpt from an ongoing dissertation. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Robotic Manipulation System Design and Control for Non-Contact Remote Diagnosis in Otolaryngology: Digital Twin Approach

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the need for non-contact medical robots to alleviate the heavy workload and emotional stress experienced by healthcare professionals while preventing infection. In response, we propose a non-contact robotic diagnostic system for otolaryngology clinics, utilizing a digital twin model for initial design optimization. The system employs a master-slave robot architecture, with the slave robot comprising a flexible endoscope manipulation robot and a parallel robot arm for controlling additional medical instruments. The novel 4 degrees of freedom (DOF) control mechanism enables the single robotic arm to handle the endoscope, facilitating the process compared to the traditional two-handed approach. Phantom experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed flexible endoscope manipulation system in terms of diagnosis completion time, NASA task load index (NASA-TLX), and subjective risk score. The results demonstrate the system's usability and its potential to alternate conventional diagnosis. © 2013 IEEE.

Prototyping a VR Sandbox for Scene Customization without 3D Authoring Skills

Virtual Reality (VR) and simulation continue po-sitioning as suitable tools for fine-tuning processes otherwise impossible in real life. Such is the case of Aether, a mobile service robot for elderly care developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aether's development was negatively impacted due to restrictions placed on accessing long-term care facilities that impeded testing object tracking, elderly tracking, fall detection, and human-robot interactions. Our efforts to maximize Aether's development led us to create a digital twin where the core functionality is replicated to train the machine learning modules to optimize the robot's responses before real-world deployment. However, the digital twin creation requires significant authoring to ensure the virtual environment matches the real one by employing 3D technical artistry skills, which demands a professional knowledgeable in this domain. This paper presents a sandbox prototype for scene customization that allows importing, positioning, scaling, and saving changes for mobile robot simulation. Our preliminary testing of the sandbox has focused on usability to understand how the setting up of the environment is perceived. Preliminary results indicate that the sandbox is usable with improvements pertaining to improving the manipulation of the objects. © 2022 IEEE.

COVIDMe: a digital twin for COVID-19 self-assessment and detection

The COVID-19 virus has governments worldwide implementing new testing strategies, trying to increase their testing capacity so they can have a complete picture of the spread of COVID-19 with as much fidelity as possible. Simultaneously, people are looking to make sense of all the information and official recommendations to manage COVID-19. We present a DT for health in the context of the COVID-19 endemic stage aiming at bridging the gap between health authorities and the general population while offering an alternative approach to screen entire communities at a relatively low cost. We outline the architecture for the platform and present open challenges to make it a safe and effective tool to combat COVID-19 after our first iteration on it. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Role of digital twin technology in medical sector-Toward ensuring safe healthcare

In today's scenario, digital technology is gaining prominence in different sectors like business, healthcare, education, security, aerospace, construction, automotive, etc. Digital twin technology is a novel technology. It represents virtually physical objects or process. The basic building block of a digital twin is internet of things (IoT) and the goal of digital twin technology is to create, test, and validate in the virtual environment. In the perspective of the healthcare sector, the digital twin virtually represents physical entity or process. The chapter organization is as follows: introduction to digital twin technology, generic applications of the digital twin, the role of digital twin technology in healthcare, and finally, the conclusion. © 2023 Scrivener Publishing LLC.

Underactuated digital twin's robotic hands with tactile sensing capabilities for well-being

Humans are social by nature, and the current physical distancing due to COVID has converted many of our daily interactions into virtual ones. Among the negative consequences of this, we find the lack of an element that is essential to humans' well-being, which is the physical touch. We explore the Digital Twin technology's prospect to support in reducing the impact of this on humans. We provide a definition of the concept of Robo Twin and explain its role in mediating the human interactions. Besides, we survey research works related Digital Twin's physical representation with a focus on underactuated Digital Twin's robotic hands. In this survey, we aim at providing findings from literature, to support researchers' decisions in the adoption and use of existing designs and implementations of Digital Twin's robotic hands, and to inform future research on current challenges and gaps in existing research works. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Conceptual Framework of Contact-Less Consumer Products Industry During and Post-pandemic Era

The COVID-19 era has reshaped the world regarding the contact-less economy, healthcare systems, remote work environment, people's lifestyle and their daily routines, etc. The consumer products (CP) industry is being impacted due to the behaviours of consumers during self-quarantine. This accelerates adopting digital transformation and upgrading the business models for the contact-less CP industry. Accordingly, this study provides a step toward the contact-less CP industry during and post-pandemic. First, we have proposed a conceptual framework for the contact-less CP industry that aims to bring together the key advanced technologies (e.g., Digital Twin (DT), blockchain, AI, cloud computing, 5G, and robots). The combination of the advanced technologies provides data monitoring, transparency, traceability, automation, and data sharing among consumers and CP partners. The proposed framework will enable a more contact-less personalized interaction that will work towards higher levels of consumer satisfaction while maintaining contact-less economy growth. Then, we have described how the proposed framework can be applied for contact-less delivery services for the CP industry during and post-pandemic. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

How to avoid a local epidemic becoming a global pandemic.

Here, we combine international air travel passenger data with a standard epidemiological model of the initial 3 mo of the COVID-19 pandemic (January through March 2020; toward the end of which the entire world locked down). Using the information available during this initial phase of the pandemic, our model accurately describes the main features of the actual global development of the pandemic demonstrated by the high degree of coherence between the model and global data. The validated model allows for an exploration of alternative policy efficacies (reducing air travel and/or introducing different degrees of compulsory immigration quarantine upon arrival to a country) in delaying the global spread of SARS-CoV-2 and thus is suggestive of similar efficacy in anticipating the spread of future global disease outbreaks. We show that a lesson from the recent pandemic is that reducing air travel globally is more effective in reducing the global spread than adopting immigration quarantine. Reducing air travel out of a source country has the most important effect regarding the spreading of the disease to the rest of the world. Based upon our results, we propose a digital twin as a further developed tool to inform future pandemic decision-making to inform measures intended to control the spread of disease agents of potential future pandemics. We discuss the design criteria for such a digital twin model as well as the feasibility of obtaining access to the necessary online data on international air travel.

COVID-19 outbreak and the role of digital twin.

COVID-19 has transformed the life of human beings and digital twin infrastructure can facilitates working remotely during COVID-19 outbreak by reducing burden on services and infrastructure. Currently, many organizations are installing and developing devices such as thermal cameras, sensors aiming to minimize human contact and so forth, in addition to enforcing social distancing resulting in reducing the risk of transmission. Due to economic reasons, lockdown restrictions are being relaxed/lifted in many countries and Pakistan which is one of the most densely populated countries in the world with a population of 220 + million is no exception. Though, Pakistan contained the first two waves of coronavirus infections reasonably well but the country is struggling to contain the third wave of the spread due to violations of social distancing norms. While our predictions may deviate from official statistics due to lack of mass testing and existence of asymptomatic infections, the described approach predicts the possible actual burden of infection over times. In view of the unique demographics, our data quantify the efficacy of social distancing as an effective measure to forestall the infection. We highlight few areas where digital twins can be created/deployed to provide services and essential facilities to citizens as COVID-19 is expected to have permanent impact on the way we work.

A bio-inspired LIDA cognitive-based Digital Twin architecture for unmanned maintenance of machine tools

Affected by COVID-19, the maintenance process of machine tools is significantly hindered, while unmanned maintenance becomes an emerging trend in such background. So far, three challenges, namely, the dependence on maintenance experts, the dynamic maintenance environments, and unsynchronized interactions between physical and information sides, exist as the main obstacles in its widespread applications. In order to fill this gap, a bio-inspired LIDA cognitive-based Digital Twin architecture is proposed, so as to achieve unmanned maintenance of machine tools through a self-constructed, self-evaluated, and self-optimized manner. A three phases process in the architecture, including the physical phase, virtual phase, and service phase, is further introduced to support the cognitive cycle for unmanned maintenance of machine tools. An illustrative example is depicted in the unmanned fault diagnosis on the rolling bearing of a drilling platform, which validates the feasibility and advantages of the proposed architecture. As an explorative study, it is wished that this work provides useful insights for unmanned maintenance of machine tools in a dynamic production environment. © 2022