The making of a digital twin
By guest blogger Yeama Bangali, from the campaign’s project FutureWork360
The digital twin of our Future Work Lab, an innovation lab in the city of Stuttgart, has passed the acid test with flying colours. During the coronavirus shutdown, it proved to be a pioneering technological solution for digital cooperation and knowledge transfer.
Creating a digital twin of a lab or any other room is easier than you would think.
The technology is based on a 360° dolly equipped with high-resolution system cameras and lasers. It scans the room in all directions and as precisely as possible. Thanks to the six cameras supported by the multi-sensor system, there is not a single blind spot. The system also communicates with reference points that were installed on the floor. This ensures precise measurements and the automatic organization of the data set.
At first, the dolly moves across the room and collects the spatial data. After this indoor mapping has been completed, the data can be visualized in the form of a point cloud, a digital representation of the physical space. The resulting data is photorealistic and can be accessed virtually as well as tagged with points of interest (POIs) in the room to provide further information.
The last step is the programming of a virtual tour on a browser-based interface with a menu bar. This creates a user-friendly interface where virtual visitors can select different thematic tours and stop at the POIs they are interested in.
In this way, research becomes a personal virtual experience.
Everyone interested is warmly invited to get in touch.
Further information:
www.futurework360.de
Q&A: Virtual lab worlds offer attractive solutions for future industrial work
Video: A virtual 360-degree lab full of industrial work innovations
About the author:
Yeama Bangali is a science communication expert at Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO in Stuttgart, Germany. She also manages the multi–channel content of the new FutureWork360 research initiative which is part of the international campaign "The Future of Work" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Yeama Bangali
Fraunhofer IAO
Multi-channel content manager
yeama.bangali@iao.fraunhofer.de
https://www.futurework360.de/en.html
https://blog.iao.fraunhofer.de/ (blog in German)