Digital Twin - Technology Trends

In recent years, Digital Twins have become an integral part of advanced manufacturing paradigm and are routinely used in design, monitoring, development, and control. In 2019, they generated a market of $3.8B that is expected to reach $38.5B in 2025.

Originally stemming from computer aided design to create a digital model of the future product (Digital Twins stage I), they have expanded their characteristics and role. From being a mere digital model, they have moved to become a digital mirror (Digital Twins stage II), allowing simulation and monitoring of a product operation). Furthermore, their modelling capability has been extended to cover services and processes. The uptake of embedded IoT and a pervasive communications infrastructure made a continuous interaction between the Digital Twin and its corresponding Physical Twin, thus extending the simulation into a co-operation (Digital Twin stage III) possible. This evolution has resulted in their adoption beyond manufacturing, and we are now seeing their use in smart cities, finance, and healthcare. Cooperation among Digital Twins is also calling for a serious standardization effort.

Digital Twins have reached a maturity, although refinement and extensions are still ongoing, in various industries and are now being considered to mimic human beings, a natural extension as they entered the healthcare sector. This opportunity of human modelling is progressing also on the side of cognitive modelling, Cognitive Digital Twins. These evolutions are pushing Digital Twins into the realm of co-operation with their physical counterpart (stage IV) and are opening the door to an independent existence (stage V).

All of this creates new business and application opportunities as well as new societal, legal, and ethical issues. Security is becoming a major and more challenging issue as interactions with Digital Twins grow and their data set expands to include personal data.

Scope of Interest

All submitted papers to this special issue (SI) are to focus on state-of-the-art research or success stories in various aspects of Digital Twins from academic and industry viewpoints. The topics of interests in this special issue include, but are not limited to:

• Digital Twins theory and modelling
• Digital Twins enabling technologies, including artificial intelligence, sensors, cloud, and edge computing
• Digital Twins blueprint
• Digital Twins standardization
• Digital Twins application areas, including manufacturing, healthcare, smart cities, finance, and education
• Digital Twins experience from concrete applications
• Digital Twins role in the digital transformation process
• Overlapping of Physical and Digital Twins (Digital Twin stage IV)
• Overlapping of Physical and Digital Twins (Digital Twin stage IV)
• Digital Twins as independent entities, instances (Digital Twins stage V)
• Personal Digital Twins
• Cognitive Digital Twins
• Societal and ethical aspects
• Security aspects