Digital Twins for every Thing and everyone

A lightweight dialogue about the current status of digital twins, and how digital twins may enter our everyday lives and homes.  

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SONJA

 Hello, everybody! My name is Sonja Pöyry and I welcome you all back to our next episode in the podcast, but this time, we decided to have a vodcast so you can actually also see us. So today, I will be discussing with my colleague, Jukka Paananen, he's the Senior Vice President  of Sales at BaseN Corporation, about digital twins. So, Jukka, maybe you introduce yourself shortly to our audience. 

JUKKA 

Sure. I've been at BaseN Corporation already for almost 15 years of time. We are now 20 years old company, which means that I've seen the big development from the monitoring, the ICT, and further on moving to the machine learning and starting to talk about IoT, Industrial Internet, how the German Industry 4.0 came out, and how the digital twins and something which I will reveal with a couple of words - how the spime has become onto the marketplace. 

SONJA

That sounds very good! So, before we actually go into the deep dive of what we have with digital twins and how we use it, could you, could you just shortly explain to our listeners what a digital twin actually is? 

JUKKA

Somebody technically will say that my answer is absolutely wrong, but I see that the digital twin is an electronic representation of a bigger amount of the objects, that are something what you can kind of copy from a place to another. 

An idea can be, as example, a ship, where every ship on the sea, most obviously, they have the navigation system, they have the steering system, they have the power line with the engines and the propellers and then they have the places where the people stay heating, cooling, sewage water, whatever services, and when you can make a kind of the digital version of that all, you can start developing those, that thing to be more efficient and copy the same efficiency that you have created in one place to all the other places with similar kind of features and objects. That's kind of the key element how I see it. 

SONJA

And I think that was already, very thoroughly explained. explained And could you also share with our audience about the digital twin deployment on BaseN? 

JUKKA

Actually the ship was not, I took the ship by purpose. The key point is that, I tell that through an example of the company called Norsepower. I know that Mr. Jukka Kuuskoski has already, or will soon, if not yet, to do the podcast or vodcast together with us but the key point is that, in company called Norsepower, they have developed an old Magnus Effect based rotor sail, that with the nowadays available mathematical algorithm crashing platform, can easily provide the power for a wind turbine, that is installed on the deck of the ship, to produce like a sail approximately 15, even 20% of more power to push the ship ahead, which directly means that it gives huge savings on the fuel cost. And the key point is that BaseN Platform is collecting enormous amount of data from that mechanical sail on the deck of the ship. It provides that to the algorithms that are optimizing the usage of that mechanical sail, and so, giving the power to the ship. And as BaseN Platform is very data agnostic, a true multi-tenant and multi-vendor environment, we can easily make it so that the bridge of the ship gets all the data they need from the sail. The shipping company gets all the data what they do in very equivalent, and then as well Norsepower as the development company gets more information how to enhance and make even better for the future the digital twin on top of the BaseN Platform. And the key point is that whenever they learn something new, they can easily deploy it through the digital twin to all of the sails they have installed, to sail around the world. This is something what I clearly can show that this is a huge impact on making the shipping industry more green and very good example how a digital twin can operate. 

SONJA

 Wow, definitely! That was quite a good example from like a rather heavy industry, but what about yourself? Do you actually already own kind of a digital twin? Or something that could be seen as a digital twin? 

JUKKA

 I'm not turning my camera but there is somebody sleeping over there, and her name is Salli, she's an Irish terrier. And yes, Salli actually is a kind of the digital twin, when she has a small smart device on her collar. For me, of course, the device is telling where Salli is around, when she's running in the woods or on the sea, or wherever she is going, by the way, we have the ice on the sea, yes, you can run there, and additionally it is giving even the health information how fast she's running, how much energy she's consuming, and so on. And that is precisely one of those things operating as well on a platform, much more of course simple than Norsepower, but it is as well a kind of the platform, where you can collect data to see the history, and to learn from the history, and to make your dog life even more fun. 

SONJA

 Ah, that sounds, that sounds great! I think it's very useful if you have the tracking because I know your dog and she is quite fast when she runs after something. 

JUKKA

 We are living on the corner to the big forest, and yes, Salli has many rabbits and elks as her friends. 

SONJA

 Yeah that reminds me of a smart gadget that I have currently in my possession, so it's an automated robot vacuum cleaner, but it actually also does mopping of the floors, and I'm in general very happy with the performance, but that only applies if there is no object like in the room that could hinder it somehow, so unfortunately I can't use it at the moment as much as I would love to, like, because if I, for example, want that it cleans the kitchen, I will literally need to build barriers. So I would be hoping that the newer one, because mine is not the latest model on the market, but that they have more functionality, like scanning the room and applying the self learning, so I could exchange, like, in the future literally, that I would get a new vacuum but it already has the data of the old one, so it doesn't need to go around the apartment again and again to scan all the rooms. And as mentioned, if there is any obstacle on the floor at this point, it will just stop moving or it will get trapped in a corner, and that is something that I think still needs improvement, but yet it is already a quite big thing, because it already supposedly does scan the room and has a logical pattern, and it's self learning. But I personally think it could just be a bit more enhanced with that. 

JUKKA

 This is precisely the idea what is there behind of the proper digital twin, when the developer or the manufacturer is learning more about the product, and they know that the products are not perfect from the starting point, they can develop them further and they can enhance the comfort and the user experience and operational elements by simulating and running the systems in the real life, and then changing them accordingly. 

SONJA

 Definitely. I was just thinking if we, you and I, in that case, think about what we would love to own as a digital twin option. To be honest, I would love to have coffee machine, that would make me very happy, because I just imagine it the way with the digital twin, that it would like, collect the data about me, and I say that as something positive because everybody is very concerned about privacy and whatnot. But to be honest, I'd rather have advertisements that I care about, and being profiled, so that I get something that interests me instead of getting something that really doesn't interest me. So my perfect morning would be that I'm actually waking up to the smell of fresh coffee and I would really like if my coffee machine would just know that I wake up at the same time every morning and just, you know that my first move would not be to put the coffee coming but rather, rather that it's already waiting for me and I literally just grab the cup of coffee and can start my day right away. So thinking about that, I would really appreciate that because I lately notice that I like the hazelnut flavor a lot and that would be, of course something that would be fed in the information stream about me, and hopefully I would get add-on services like, for example, getting suggestions on different flavored coffees or like, if the machine notices that I do drink quite a lot that they would recommend one with less caffeine, like also including some health benefits. So if we think about that, what is it that you would like to own as a digital twin? 

JUKKA

 From digital twin perspective, the coffee machine is one of the objects inside a smart home. Kind of thinking the smart home and thinking about the coffee machine in there. Coffee machine in itself has objects like a little amount of the artificial intelligence and it can based on the time of the year and the weather like to be expected, whether it's Monday or Sunday, to guess when you will be waking up and what kind of coffee would you like to have, if it's a rainy day in the winter or whether it is a sunny day on the summer season. And that is kind of, kind of the small flavor on the big picture of building the smart home. 

Smart home can be done on the relatively expensive way by using the kind of the heavy duty stuff that is driving the smart home to the smart building to the smart city. Examples of Scheinder, Schneider Electric, or ABB KNX solutions, and then building on top of those ones things like the Amazon Alexa or Apple Siri ecosystems, and that kind of things, but the key point is that how much of comfort you can build, how much of the sustainability you can build. And then, a good example is that, yes, putting off the lights from your phone, checking from your phone whether you, as example, forgot your coffee machine or iron or something like that on when you left to the office, and switch them off remotely when necessary. They are kind of the big and valuable security related things. Then furthermore, having the automated functionality of the home or away, which means that when the house recognizes that the people have left and there are no more telephones on the table, then it will automatically reduce the ventilation a little bit or put the cooling a little bit more off or something like that. They are the things. And then the smart home providing for the building information about the behavior of the people when they are at home, etc., etc., to optimize, as example, the whole building heating system and simulate it to be more efficient and more economical, ecological, and to save again the energy because the energy saving and sustainability are on one side, and then of course the comfort of the living is always on the other side of the thing. 

A good, or perhaps the best, simple thing is that we Finns have quite often the summer cottages, and if on the winter season, you recognize on Friday afternoon that I will go from the office directly to the summer cottage and then you say to your home that I'm off for the weekend, it automatically increases the security and the alarm system a little bit and reduces, as example, the heating with a couple of centigrade, which already kind of saving 20% of the energy bill for heating the house. Then, getting that information down to the house, and then further to the smart city purposes to make it even, shall i say, academically, valuable information about the behavior of the building, behavior of the house, behavior of the town, and so on. That is giving for the academic world the tools for developing further the sustainable solutions for living. 

SONJA

 Wow, that actually in theory then means that you would kind of maximize your comfort while you actually minimize your carbon footprint, I think that's beneficial for everyone out there. 

JUKKA

 That’s precicely the point. Less environmental pollution and more fun and more comfort. 

SONJA

 And how would you describe the current situation, the digital twin market, would you say it's, it's merely like a buzzword and it's mainly used in the business area or do you think that it will come basically to every household, like you described that could with a smart home? 

JUKKA

 Digital twin can be splitted to different markets, where the fun and the entertainment is 1 area, where you are creating the right amount of thrill with various types of objects in whatever thing, and using machine learning, artificial intelligence, to make the things precisely fitted for you. Then it is as well kind of tool for simulating and developing technologies that don't exist yet, as example, the industries to build products that instead of the fire-and-forget, meaning that you make a product and then you sell it then, and then you hope that your customer is happy. Or alternatively fire-and-remember, which means that you are selling the solution to the customer, you keep the lifeline to the product that you have deployed, you collect the information of the customer behavior, and see if the customer is happy, and you can adjust it, or you can permanently change it and use that information for your future development of the tools. On the automotive industry, you can easily see that. Comparison of the old cars where the car was delivered, and then the vendor just hoped that it's working to the new Volkswagens of today, the ID3, ID4, which are constantly collecting the data from the behavior of the driver, and trying to optimize the car to be even more comfortable, powerful, yet economical for the drive. The same is with the apartment, the same is with whatever things the normal users are in the need of, and then bringing that to the point which I mentioned on the start, the Industry 4.0 where the factory floor monitoring, as example, is creating the benefits by utilizing the same technology with higher usage rate, by utilizing the digital twins and that is then creating the benefit and as well the ecological things. 

SONJA

 But how can we actually achieve that? Because for private users, I would assume that a digital twin should be something that is affordable and deployable for everybody, so how do you go around this? Because I think, we had a chat, prior to this already, that it would be quite difficult if you have different operating systems, so how can this problem be solved? 

JUKKA

 This is very correct, if thinking about smart home as example, and if the only interface will be, let us say, the Apple Siri kind of the thing, or Amazon Alexa kind of the thing, then it is kind of, you can't buy a house because you don't like that user interface. It would be horrible. So the systems must be mixed and matched, which means that the different kind of protocols for the different kind of things to communicate, different brands of the cars, different manufacturers of the house holding appliances, different technologies, must learn utilizing similar kind of things, just like we all know when we go driving here in the North Europe, you drive on the left, or in the UK, you drive on the left, or on the right side of the road, and everybody knows it, so the protocol for communicating is pre agreed. And then this must as well kind of deployed to the high end to the low end, meaning the expensive sports car or usual bicycles must fit on the same picture. 

Let us say, here in Finland, Lidl has started to sell their smart home solution with a Zigbee protocol compliant, and you can utilize the Phillips or the Chinese inexpensive tool, gadgets on the same system and that is something what I consider valuable, and that is then actually the similar or almost similar to the solutions what the expensive equivalents like the ABB or Schneider Electric can produce, and that is something what I consider important it needs to come to the masses of the people before the digital twins can create the things like smart homes, as an accepted thing, and then the consumers, or the inhabitants of the houses are starting to expect such services to be the real life. 

SONJA

 Wow, that's quite some things we still have to do if we want to really enter in the digital twin market also for consumers. What kind of suggestion would you give to technology providers? 

JUKKA

 Don't start making the things on your own, don't go for developing the business critical applications on top of the entertainment quality solutions. Consider carefully what kind of services you expect to be included on the solutions so that you have the right services available, and with the services, I mean the technical capabilities of the platform and the tools, and the sensors, that are making the operation, and as well the people who can serve you. There I don't go for thinking about what are the products on the marketplace but the scenario is wide, think about how much own expertise you need what kind of expertise you should get from those guys who know what to do. 

BaseN is a good example, we don't do anything else than those digital twins and the platform for collecting, storing, analyzing, and expressing the data out as in big data and data lake environment. That is our expertise. And that's the reason why, of course, those who are in the need should contact us. 

SONJA

 Thank you very much Jukka! That was very detailed and it was fun chatting with you! And I certainly hope for that coffee machine to come into my life soon and yeah thanks again for your time and for your effort. And for everybody else like, stay tuned for the next podcast and SUBSCRIBE! 

JUKKA

 Great, pleasure, thank you! Bye bye.