The “digital twin”, which is a virtual copy of a real product, process, system or facility, is among the technologies that will change the way it interacts with the world.
Digital twins, which are considered to have a major impact on existing products and markets, are expected to enter the “early majority” stage in the next 3-6 years.
Monitoring and real-time analysis of digital twin, systems, preventing problems before they occur by providing feedback to the system by creating events that are unlikely or dangerous in real life in digital environment, identifying ineffective steps in processes by analyzing the work of humans and machines, and feedback for improvement There are potential uses such as providing In addition, the real system is automatically improved in advanced digital twins.
This technology, which increases productivity, quality and efficiency, engineering efficiency and reduces operating costs, is used in many fields such as automotive, aviation and space, health, renewable energy, city management and production.
Doing digital twins first
One of the areas where digital twins are used effectively is the defense industry. There are exemplary uses in the defense industry such as improving hardware/platform production processes, running a digital twin phenomenon for each of the platforms in the field (such as F35, Mars Rover), providing preventive maintenance by collecting data from platforms/systems, and sharing preventive maintenance information across platforms.
A digital twin is created on the ground with the data collected from the platform. Before sending a command to the platform, the result of the command can first be tested on the ground digital twin. For preventive maintenance, detailed data can be drawn from the sensors on the post-flight platform and fed to the digital twin. Every platform in the manned/unmanned land, air and sea area can be developed and optimized by running digital twins.
Pioneers of health and smart manufacturing technologies
ASELSAN subsidiary Turkish defense and technology company BITES Defense Aerospace Technologies Software Electronics Trade Inc. has been conducting R&D studies on the digital twin recently.
The company, which exchanges ideas and cooperates with domestic/foreign stakeholders from different fields such as energy, aviation, plastic injection, health, focuses on developing an application framework and tools for the rapid and cost-effective development of digital twins.
BITES received the approval of the ITEA Cluster, where the leading industry players of Europe meet with its two projects.
“TiDiT-Timeline Driven Digital Twin” and “VESTA – Proactive Protection Against Phishing-Based Ransomware” projects, which are led by the ITEA Cluster’s project calls under the umbrella of Eureka, one of the leading platforms of the European Union (EU) ecosystem, and a partner. As a result of the applications, the ITEA secretariat and TUBITAK’s evaluation processes were successfully completed.
ITEA is one of Europe’s innovative and industry-oriented programs, and also plays an active role in the development of competitive sectors. As the last stage of the process, BITES made its national applications to the TEYDEB 1509 Program.
The Time-Axis Digital Twin Project, with a budget of 14 million Euros, will be carried out by a consortium of 17 partners from 5 countries, namely Turkey, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia.
At the end of the project, it is aimed to develop the time-oriented TiDiT Digital Twin platform, which will enable better decision-making in business processes. Project partners include Philips Medical Systems Nederland BV, TNO, Almende, Total Reality, Eindhoven University, Yazzoom, SISTRADE, ISEP Institute, Caretronic, Alp Aviation, Innova, Panasonic Life Solutions, Bewell Technology, which stand out with their health and smart manufacturing technologies.
“We aim to become an important player”
Uğur Coşkun, General Manager of BİTES, said that the existing digital twin services in the market cannot fully meet customer needs, cannot prevent unexpected failures, and cannot offer cost-effective models.
Pointing out that the end users had to install each simulation using different software, Coşkun stated that this created negative effects in terms of cost, time and effort.
Coskun said:
“Combining different software capabilities while meeting customer needs through the application of innovative technologies, the TiDiT Project aims to create a model-as-a-service timeline-oriented digital twin platform to enable better decision-making and increase situational awareness.
We care about leading such an international consortium in an emerging technology field. With such projects, we aim to become an important player both in Turkey and internationally by strengthening our muscles on the digital twin.”
