Digital twins in cockpits will help planes look after themselves

DIGITAL TWINSAI are of a component, a device or even an entire production line in a factory. Fed with data from sensors installed on its physical opposite number, the digital version can be used to plan maintenance, spot any emerging problems and simulate the effect of upgrades and design changes. in particular are followed by their manufacturers in this way. General Electric, Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney, the three principal firms involved, maintain simulations of individual engines at engineering centres on the ground. These suck in real-time data from their counterparts in the air.At Cranfield University, in Britain, however, a group of engineers hope to go further than this. They propose expanding the idea of digital twinning to produce what they rather grandiosely refer to as a “conscious aircraft”. This would involve creating a digital twin of an entire plane by merging its various monitoring systems, and interpreting the result using artificial intelligence ().