February 18th, 2022

1 min read

Digital twins are digital copies of anything existing in the real world: a person, a city, a factory, a car, an electric grid, a manufacturing system, a factory…

They gather past, present and predictive data to anticipate their development and outcomes.

NTT’s Digital Twin Computing (DTC) goes one step forward: it enables digital twins to interact among themselves, freely recombining them to perform more precise simulations of the real world.

Conventional Digital Twins Network

In a conventional digital twin network, the different elements are created and evolve isolated.

Comparison chart of live vs. digital approaches in autonomous driving, robot control, and medical care.

Digital Twin computing

DTC goes further: it starts from individual digital twins to build a holistic integration of the real and digital worlds.

Infographic showing real-world elements: smart devices, individuals, and environmental sensors like cameras and weather icons.

First, DTC makes it possible to create digital twins combined with data from environment sensors.

An Illustration including a robotic arm, car, train, robot head, and four human avatars with different hairstyles.

Then it builds precise copies of real-world, complex systems such as cities, traffic, infrastructures and even human bodies.

Diagram of Digital Twin Computing showing Replication, Fusion, and Exchange with illustrated human heads in different configurations.

Finally, it makes it possible to conduct highly precise experiments and trials to better plan the future and correct or mitigate damage.

Diagram of Digital World Complete Systems showing Traffic, Urban Space with smart cities and infrastructure, and People focused on health.

The number of applications can be infinite, ranging from those on a planet-wide scale to individual health treatments.

List of digital twin applications including autonomous systems, future society design, urban issue resolution, and disease prediction.