Co-mingling creative tools in an industrial setting, LSU digital art students are building digital twins — interactive maps with augmented reality overlays of spaces created using over a dozen consumer-grade software programs and hardware tools.
Unlike already existing augmented or virtual reality technology, digital twins are more than just a visual duplicate. Twins are made using tools like Blender, a 3D modeling program, Unreal, a video game engine, and Computer Aided Design, a scientific visualization software.
Digital Twins feature an interactive dashboard of information with live sensors, task management, health data and more that was previously tucked away on spreadsheets.
Jason Jamerson is an assistant professor of Virtual Production and Immersive Media. College of Art and Design professor Derick Ostrenko and engineering advisor David Ben Spry join Jamerson in paving the way to intersplice their work with digital twins into practical applications.
“Imagine getting a path to the nearest coffee shop, finding the friend you’re meeting by seeing them through the wall, ordering a drink by asking the table for it, and working collaboratively on a virtual white board,” Jamerson said in an email to the Reveille. “Digital twins are the first step in bringing the everyday world to life.”
The efforts have been noticed by Future Use of Energy in Louisiana, or FUEL, who awarded the researchers with a $217,403 use-inspired research and development award. Syngenta, an agrichemical company, has also partnered with LSU to develop a digital twin of their processing facilities.
“Digital twins can use any data that’s out there, whether old or new, to make interactive experiences,” Jamerson said. “By integrating AI tools, we can fill in the blanks with the best possible guess as to what’s missing. Every project is a balance between what we know and what we need to accomplish.”
Ultimately, the goal of this project is to develop a reduced-cost alternative to traditional engineering methods. By using consumer-grade products, digital twins have been at least five times cheaper in comparison. This can potentially redefine digital infrastructure, making the chemical processing industry more scalable, adaptable and accessible for future needs.
“Industry partners have told us they are only able to make use of 5% of their data,” Jamerson said. “We connect that data and make it experiential. Once we’ve woven these sources into what we call digital threads, we can train custom AI agents not just on the databases, but on the real-time sensor feeds so that you can ask a factory how long a repair will take or predict athlete recovery time all with natural language.”
LSU researchers have also collaborated with NASA to develop twins at their research facilities. The hope is that digital twins can create critical spaces across all sectors.
“Digital twins make remote work much more effective,” Jamerson said. “Instead of a phone call or watching a shaky video, remote workers can walk around a live simulation in real-time. On-site workers can get support from remote engineers who can see information they can’t: temperature, humidity, voltage, heart rate, pathing, cybersecurity threats and so much more.”
As time goes on, more tools are being made to make working on digital twins easier, like Scaniverse by Niantic, a program available to anyone with a Meta Quest. Scaniverse allows users to create interactive 3D models using gaussians splats. Gaussian splatting in 3D modeling is the process of creating high-quality, real-time digital models by combining photos and videos.
“A good digital model is the first step in building an interactive digital twin,” Jamerson said. “As twins become easier, our research goals change: soon LSU will be producing real-time digital twins for disaster management, factory production dashboards and digital humans of athletes in partnership with Kinesiology to predict performance and injury recovery data.”
