In manufacturing in predictive analytics, a high-tech process called digital twinning emerged some years ago as a way to refine a corporate approach to product development, but for some companies, it seems to have gone off the radar for a while.
These days, Volkswagen is leading the charge in applying this type of modeling approach, as described by Craig Cole in a piece at CNet’s Road/Show today.
The Porsche Taycan electric vehicle is utilizing a digital twinning system in order to pinpoint when certain parts might need replaced or repaired.
Cole reports the company’s subsidiary Cariad will be in charge of designing these systems. Here’s how Cariad describes its operations:
“Our groundbreaking tech stack consists of three layers: hardware, software, and applications. It includes our own operating system and cloud. This architecture reduces complexity, streamlines development, enables seamless integration, and minimizes security risks.”
As an example of digital twinning in action, Cole describes how an air suspension system would be handled with this technology.
“Data is collected about body acceleration and sent to a backend system, which compares this information to the rest of the vehicle fleet,” Cole writes. “If thresholds are exceeded, the driver can be alerted to have their car inspected for potential damage. Privacy is important to Porsche, and owners must opt in to share any data, all of which is kept anonymous. Data is preprocessed right in the vehicle to minimize the amount that needs to be transferred, but owners can deactivate this information transmission at any time. Security is a top priority for Porsche.”
Digital twinning isn’t just useful in the automotive industry.
“It seems today that the Digital Twin is becoming about as ubiquitous as IoT devices themselves,” writes Tom Leeson at OpenText. “Popular use cases for digital twins in manufacturing include: Continuous monitoring of product data from IoT devices has clear advantages for quality management over random inspection.”
Amid all of the other newfangled applications to vehicle systems, look for digital twinning to emerge as a way to improve total cost of ownership and the value of a used car, truck or SUV.
