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What is a Digital Twin? The Technology Replicating Real-World Factories and Cities in Virtual Space

Virtual twins break down before physical factories do—the operating principle of digital twins. What if you could know an airplane engine will fail before it actually happens? A digital twin creates a 'digital twin' by replicating real-world factories, facilities, cities, and even human organs in a virtual space, streaming data collected from reality in real time so the virtual twin moves identically to the real world. Later, in 2002, Professor Michael Grieves of the University of Michigan presented a conceptual model consisting of physical products, virtual products, and the data flow connecting them during a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) lecture, establishing the academic framework. The name 'digital twin' itself is known to have been formalized by NASA's John Vickers in the early 2010s.