'OK, Houston, we've had a problem here,' said astronaut John Swigert in 1970, after an explosion disabled the Apollo 13 spacecraft on its way to the moon, 200,000 miles from Earth. Those iconic words triggered a heroic effort that eventually succeeded in bringing the astronauts home safely. To do so, NASA scientists and engineers needed to develop and test innovative solutions on the fly. A critical tool they used was an Earth-based 'twin' of the spacecraft ' then, mostly physical ' upon which they could experiment swiftly and safely without endangering the astronauts. Half a century later, this concept has evolved into the digital twin (DT) ' a digital replica of a complex real-world entity. DTs comprise two key elements: a high-fidelity model of the entity and a dynamic mechanism to keep the model true in real time, even as the entity undergoes changes. In industrial settings, internet-of-things (IoT) sensors typically provide the data for dynamic updates. DTs are especially...
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