TwinVAR: Digital and Physical Twin Visualization with Virtual and Augmented Reality

An advanced digital model that emulates a physical entity or process using real-time data and simulations, a digital twin, is rapidly expanding across various industries. Digital twins enable the continuous monitoring of systems and provide data for predictive maintenance and performance analysis of either part of, or the whole system. The substantial amount of complex data used by digital twins can be simplified through visualization, streamlining real-time monitoring and analysis. While augmented reality (AR) performs contextual overlay of interactive, real-time data onto the physical environment, virtual reality (VR) enables user interaction in a virtual surrounding that enables spatial awareness when using digital twins. Additionally, AR/VR facilitates remote collaboration by allowing experts to view and interact with the digital twin, thus simplifying the troubleshooting and maintenance of physical assets. In this work, we develop TwinVAR, a design tool that provides digital twin visualization with AR/VR. In particular, we describe the design and implementation of TwinVAR, demonstrate its visualization capabilities, and exemplify its practical use to understand predictive failure analysis on digital twins for supercomputers.