A new perspective on Digital Twins: Imparting intelligence and agency to entities
This work addresses confusion in the industry about Digital Twins, offering a foundational redefinition that could guide future development and humanization of the concept.
The paper tackles the ambiguity in the Digital Twin concept by proposing a new perspective that views DTs as systems imparting intelligence and agency to entities, emphasizing their bidirectional nature and role in shifting control from humans to physical elements.
Despite the Digital Twin (DT) concept being in the industry for a long time, it remains ambiguous, unable to differentiate itself from information models, general computing, and simulation technologies. Part of this confusion stems from previous studies overlooking the DT's bidirectional nature, that enables the shift of agency (delegating control) from humans to physical elements, something that was not possible with earlier technologies. Thus, we present DTs in a new light by viewing them as a means of imparting intelligence and agency to entities, emphasizing that DTs are not just expert-centric tools but are active systems that extend the capabilities of the entities being twinned. This new perspective on DTs can help reduce confusion and humanize the concept by starting discussions about how intelligent a DT should be, and its roles and responsibilities, as well as setting a long-term direction for DTs.