Digital Twins: Enhancing Model-Based Design with AR, VR and MR (online)

Overview

Digital Twins: Enhancing Model-based Design with Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality 

Background  

The idea of "digital twins" originated with NASA. Digital twins were then adopted into the manufacturing industry as a conceptual version of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).

Engineering systems have always used abstraction techniques to model complex problems. But the digital twin takes this idea further by allowing you to model and simulate a problem.

Thus, the digital twin is a virtual model that incorporates all the necessary information about a physical ecosystem to solve a particular problem - typically involving a simulation process. 

Other industries have adopted the digital twins paradigm with complex processes, such as construction (built environments) and healthcare. This course covers digital twins' overall design and development principles but emphasises using digital twins for manufacturing and construction (built environments). The digital twin is also a key component of the metaverse.

In this course, you will learn the following:

  • The use of Machine learning and Deep Learning techniques (collectively referred to as artificial intelligence (AI)) in developing and deploying digital twins
  • How to use simulation techniques with digital twins. 
  • Modelling digital twins using augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and other strategies for complex problems.  
  • Learning and pedagogy in AR/VR systems for education
  • Responsible AI for digital twins
  • AR/VR and digital twins
  • Simulation techniques for digital twins: agent-based modelling, systems dynamics, discrete event simulation
  • Applying digital twins to 'model-based design.' Model-based design help engineers and scientists design and implement complex dynamic systems using virtual (digital) modelling technologies. As a result, you can iterate your design through fast, repeatable tests. In addition, you can automate the end-to-end lifecycle of your project by connecting virtual replicas of physical components in a digital space. Once the system is modelled as a twin, various existing and new engineering problems, such as predictive maintenance and anomaly detection, can be modeled and simulated. 
  • Implementing digital twins in Python, MATLAB (MathWorks), and Unity – but prior knowledge of these systems is not needed. 
  • Application of digital twins to manufacturing and construction problems
  • Using the digital twin to design and implement use cases and services in the metaverse

The course takes a case study approach in the form of motivating case studies where we apply digital twin perspectives to real-life problems. The course involves code walkthroughs but not hands-on coding.

Audience

The course targets aspiring and seasoned simulation engineers and industry practitioners who want to develop digital twin models. Prior knowledge of engineering or built environments in any discipline is preferred, but prior knowledge of coding is optional. 

Note: for the first time this year, the course covers digital twins for built environments (construction). Details for this section will be updated soon. But if you have any questions, please contact us. 

Programme details

Dates, Times and Delivery

This course will run over six live online sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from 14:00 - 18:30, with a half-hour break in-between. 

Session dates:

  • Monday 9 October
  • Wednesday 11 October
  • Friday 13 October
  • Monday 16 October
  • Wednesday 18 October and
  • Friday 20 October. 

Sessions will be 14:00 to 18:30 (UK time). In some cases, the sessions will extend to 19:00, and will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams.

A world clock, and time zone converter can be found here: https://bit.ly/3bSPu6D

No attendance at Oxford is required and you do not need to purchase any software.

Accessing Your Online Course 

Details about accessing the private MS Teams course site will be emailed to you during the week prior to the course commencing.  

Please get in touch if you have not received this information within three working days of the course start date. 

Digital certification

To complete the course, you will be required to attend and participate in all of the live sessions on the course in order to be considered for a certificate. Participants who complete the course will receive a link to download a University of Oxford digital certificate. Information on how to access this digital certificate will be emailed to you after the end of the course.

The certificate will show your name, the course title and the dates of the course you attended. You will also be able to download your certificate or share it on social media if you choose to do so.

Fees

Description Costs
Course fee £1095.00

Payment

All courses are VAT exempt.

Register immediately online 

Click the “book now” button on this webpage. Payment by credit or debit card is required.

Request an invoice

If you require an invoice for your company or personal records, please complete an online application form. The Course Administrator will then email you an invoice. Payment is accepted online, by credit/debit card, or by bank transfer. Please do not send card or bank details via email.

Tutors

The tutors listed below may be subject to change.

Ajit Jaokar

Course Director

Based in London, Ajit's work spans research, entrepreneurship and academia relating to artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT). 

Ajit is the Course Director and/or tutor for Continuing Education’s portfolio of artificial intelligence courses for professionals:

Ajit is also a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Engineering Science here at the University of Oxford.

He also works as a Data Scientist through his company feynlabs - focusing on building innovative early stage AI prototypes for domains such as cybersecurity, robotics and healthcare.

Besides the University of Oxford, Ajit has also conducted AI courses in the London School of Economics (LSE), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and as part of the The Future Society at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

He is also currently working on a book to teach AI using mathematical foundations at high school level. 

Ajit was listed in the top 30 influencers for IoT for 2017 along with Amazon, Bosch, Cisco, Forrester and Gartner by the German insurance company Munich Re.

Ajit publishes extensively on KDnuggets and Data Science Central.

He was recently included in top 16 influencers (Data Science Central), Top 100 blogs (KDnuggets), Top 50 (IoT central), and 19th among the top 50 twitter IoT influencers (IoT Institute). 

His PhD research is based on AI and Affective Computing (how AI interprets emotion).

Dr David McKee

Tutor

Dr David Mc Kee, Chair of the Open Source, Standards, and Platform Stacks at the Digital Twin Consortium / CEO, CTO and founder, Slingshot Simulations

Dr David McKee is the CEO, CTO and founder at Slingshot Simulations, an enterprise fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering, and chairs the technology working groups at the OMG Digital Twin Consortium. As CTO at Slingshot since 2019 David leads the company’s work on Digital Twins working across Cloud, IoT, and machine learning platforms.

At the Digital Twin Consortium David jointly lead the work on standardising a Digital Twin definition and continues to lead the Technology, Terminology, and Taxonomy working group. He is also responsible for leading the Open Source Initiative and a collaborative effort including Microsoft, Bentley Systems, DELL, and NTT to define a reference architecture for building Digital Twin Systems.

Before forming Slingshot David was a senior researcher at the University of Leeds building these systems for partners including the likes of Jaguar Land Rover and AliCloud.

Dr Didem Gurdur Broo

Tutor

Center for Design Research, Stanford University

Didem cares about the future of the world and nature. She is a computer scientist with a PhD in mechatronics, which can give you an idea about how much she loves to talk about the future and emerging technologies. She is a data person, always finds a way to talk about how important it is to know your data, use it to make decisions, and at some point, expect her to talk about art, visualizations, and visual analytics. Didem is a person who does not hesitate to talk about inequalities and point out her ethical concerns. She dreams of a better world and actively works on improving inequalities regardless of their nature. She is an analytical thinker with a passion for design thinking, a researcher with a future perspective, an engineer who likes problems more than solutions, and a teacher who likes to play during lectures. She is a good reader, sailor, divemaster, photographer, and drone pilot.

Currently, Didem is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow on Human-centered and Sustainable Cyber-physical Systems at Stanford University. Her project focuses on intelligence, autonomy, and interoperability of cyber-physical systems. She uses data science, design thinking, future thinking, and systems thinking as guiding principles to design future intelligent and autonomous systems. The project is funded by European Commission's prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions which supports excellence in research and innovation. Prior to this project, she was at the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge as a research associate for several years. She has worked at the intersection of data science and engineering projects with a focus on the design and implementation of digital twins for cyber-physical systems. In addition to being an IEEE Senior Member, she also sits on the advisory board of several organisations and support their strategic development on topics related to responsible artificial intelligence/data science, sustainable technology and equal STEAM education activities for young women.

Dirk Hartmann

Tutor

Dirk Hartmann is a distinguished scientist, intrapreneur, and thought leader in the field of Simulation and Digital Twins.  

Among many distinctions, he has been awarded the prestigious Wernervon-Siemens Top Innovator by the Siemens CEO and CTO for generating novel products and services cross product lines through his innovations.  

In his career he took several leading roles in research, innovation, and development including a lead of a 2-digit million Siemens R&D program and the technical leadership for the Simulation & Digital Twin field at Siemens Technology.  

He is a passionate mentor, teacher, and supervisor for the next generation of innovators and experts exploring jointly promising Digital Twin solutions for the industry.  

Beyond this, he is a member of several high-level international conference committees and associations like EU-MATH driving industrial mathematics both on a national, European, and international level. 

Dr Francesco Ciriello

Tutor

Lecturer in Engineering Education, King’s College London

Francesco is a Lecturer in the Department of Engineering at King’s College London, where he teaches interdisciplinary design and mechatronics. He previously worked in the Education Group at MathWorks and provided consultancy services to educators and researchers on the use of MATLAB & Simulink. Francesco has broad expertise in Simulation and Artificial Intelligence, with application to Robotics & Control systems, signal processing and IoT. He also holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge for his work in experimental fluid dynamics and a MEng in Civil Engineering from Imperial College London. 

Dr Lars Kunze

Course Director

Lars Kunze is a Departmental Lecturer in Robotics in the Oxford Robotics Institute (ORI) and the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. At ORI, he leads the Cognitive Robotics Group (CRG).

Lars is also a Stipendiary Lecturer in Computer Science at Christ Church, a Programme Fellow of the Assuring Autonomy International Programme (AAIP), and an Editor of the German Journal of Artificial Intelligence (KI Journal, Springer).

His areas of expertise lie in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). His goal is to enable robots to understand their surroundings, to act autonomously, and to explain their own behaviour in meaningful human terms. To this end, his research concerns the design and development of fundamental AI techniques for autonomous robot systems. He focusses on the combination of knowledge representation, reasoning, machine learning, and robot perception; motivated by applications in complex, real-world environments.

Lars studied Cognitive Science (BSc, 2006) and Computer Science (MSc, 2008) at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, and partly at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

He received his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 2014. During his PhD, Lars worked on methods for naive physics and common sense reasoning in the context of everyday robot manipulation. He contributed to several national, European and international projects including RoboHow, RoboEarth, and the PR2 Beta program.

In May 2013, Lars was appointed as a Research Fellow in the Intelligent Robotics Lab at the School of Computer Science at Birmingham University.  Here he worked on qualitative spatio-temporal models for perception planning and knowledge-enabled perception, contributing to the European research projects STRANDS and ALOOF.

He was a visiting researcher in the JSK Lab at the University of Tokyo, Japan (Summer 2011) and the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory at Tufts University, US (Spring 2015).

Namrita Mahindro

Tutor

Namrita is a senior strategic executive with CXO level success in leading organisations transform their businesses leveraging digital and technology.
Currently, she is the Chief Digital Officer at Aditya Birla Chemicals, Filaments and Insulators (CFI)

Over the past two decades she has been both an entrepreneur and part of the corporate world across sectors (Agriculture, Automotive, Chemicals, Retail, Travel & Hospitality, Technology), working in India, US & UK with FTSE 100 companies like Inchcape, Tata Group (USD$100bn), Mahindra Group (USD$20billion) & Aditya Birla Group (ABG, USD$60bn)

An award winning digital transformation thought leader and practioner, Namrita’s forte lies in creating competitive advantage for organisations by re-defining business models, re-imagining customer experiences, re-engineering business processes, building people capabilities and orchestrating shifts in organisation culture. 

Over the past few years, particularly, Namrita has been leading the smart manufacturing & supply chain transformations working on building IIoT platforms which house digital twins for critical assets, driving energy optimisation, împroved asset & plant reliability, AR / VR  & cobots led safety & training initiatives; logistics platforms for better cost & productivity efficiency; third party integrated business planning platforms for better demand forecasting, supply planning & dynamic scenario planning for the VUCA world we live in.

A technology evangelist, Namrita is deeply committed to building data driven organisations; fostering a data & analytics culture; driving Responsible AI, defining data & AI ethics policy & governance; predicting & mitigating data privacy & security risks; enabling data based value creation & responsible innovation.

Namrita is also an Independent Board Director and a Shadow Board member at CFI.
Additionally, she is a Start Up Mentor and Life & Leadership Transformation Coach and gives back to community by teaching and serving as an advisory member across different industry bodies including NASSCOM’s Cloud Advisory committee, one of the founding member’s of  IAMAI’s Chief Digital Officer’s Club and across various committees at DMAi India

Namrita’s accolades include digital transformation awards for Taj Hotels, Club Mahindra, Mahindra Auto and Aditya Birla Chemicals.
More recently she was also the recipient of the CIO100 Game Changer Award by Foundry.
She was featured at TEDx Gateway Salon in Mumbai in November 2022 amongst the top ten women leaders at Aditya Birla Group who are Breaking Barriers and recognised in CXO Junction as one of the top 10 most followed Chief Digital Officer’s in India in Dec 2022.

Nicolas Waern

Guest Speaker

CEO and Founder, Winniio 

Reality Researcher and Digital Twin Specialist, Nicolas Waern is a widely recognized subject matter expert in leveraging digital twin technology to digitally transform the built environment lifecycle.

He is the co-chair of the Manufacturing working group, the telecommunication working group for the Digital Twin Consortium, the Director of Dcarbon Solutions, the interim CSO of EDX Technologies, and the founder and CEO of WINNIIO Consulting.  

He has developed an innovative NASA-inspired reality improvement methodology for creating digital twins in any industry with special attention to the unique needs of real estate ecosystems through his globally recognized subject matter expertise in Smart Cities, Smart Buildings, BIM to Twin strategies and the Global energy transition.  

Nicolas is a thought leader in edge native strategies, federated digital twinning, and distributed intelligence. Nicolas excels at consolidating fragmented IoT data sources into a strategic AI-ready data fabric for the built environment providing informed perspectives on immersive XR visualization and human-centered design considerations enabling path-creation strategies leveraging digital twins in the AEC space.  

He is a keynote speaker, workshop leader, and sought-after educational expert when it comes to problem-solving, and digital transformation coupled with Digital Twin implementation strategies towards hi-fi holographic societies at scale coupled with 5G/6G national digital twin strategies. 

Rajkumar Bondugula

Tutor

Rajkumar Bondugula has earned a M.S. and a Ph.D. from University of Missouri-Columbia, USA, both in Computer Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence (AI). He has co-authored 20 peer-reviewed scientific publications, a book titled "Application of Fuzzy Logic in Bioinformatics", 16 patent applications and his work has been cited over 250 times in the academic literature. He is a frequent guest lecturer in multiple universities, an executive faculty at Emory University Continuing Education, and a frequent podcast guest speaker. In nearly two decades, he has professionally used AI for computer vision, computational biology, e-commerce, social intelligence, Fintech and Telecom. In addition, he is also an expert in natural language processing and distributed computing. 

 He joins us from Verizon, where he is currently an AI Luminary Scientist and Data Science Fellow. He leads Digital Twin initiatives and is responsible for AI and Simulation modeling aspects of Digital Twins. In addition, he also leads the development of Cognitive Classifiers used for corporate data management.  

Before Verizon, Raj was a Distinguished Scientist and a Fellow at Equifax. He was responsible for leading a team of Data Scientists and Big Data Engineers to develop innovative solutions to hard problems that lead to organizational growth in 3-5 years.  Prior to Equifax, he did a brief stint at a startup called Shoutlet, established data science practice at Home Depot, lead a machine learning team at Sears Holdings Corporation and was a scientist at Department of Defense Biotechnology High Performance Computing Software Applications Institute. 

Dr Tamara Monti

Tutor

EDUCATION BUSINESS LEADER, DASSAULT SYSTEMES, EURONORTH

Tamara MONTI is the Education business leader for global software company Dassault Systèmes in Northern Europe, with the main objective to empower the workforce of the future.

She is working closely with Education and Industry leaders to demonstrate the value of the 3DExperience platform to upskill all engineers to speed up sustainable innovation.

She earned a PhD degree in Electromagnetics in 2013 and has been a visiting researcher at the Trieste Synchrotron, at Temple University of Philadelphia and at the University of Maryland at College Park working on microwave nanotechnology.
She held a postdoctoral position at the University of Nottingham from 2014 to 2017 on high power microwave material processing.

In 2017, she joined CST, subsequently acquired by Dassault Systèmes as part the SIMULIA brand, where she was one of the computational electromagnetic experts, supporting customers in the transportation and mobility industries.

Dr Yogita  Khedkar-Chaudhar

Course Tutor

Dr.prof. Yogita Khedkar-Chaudhar has 11 years of teaching experience and 15 years of counselling experience in Clinical Psychology.
She is assistant professor at New Arts, Commerce & Science College, Ahmednagar and a practising clinical psychologist. 

She is interested in the future of education, including new pedagogies for inclusion.
Her work during COVID with students and the community has made her realize the need for new modes of engagement with learners to master skills rapidly and in non-conventional ways.

Yogita's research includes topics such as Emotional Maturity, game addiction, occupational stress, mental health and Women’s Mental Health, Statistical Analysis in Psychology, Social Adjustment and Motivational Conflicts.
Therapies she has practised include Cognitive Therapy, Behavioural Therapy, CBT, Person Centred Therapy, Psychoanalysis, Relaxation Techniques, Self-Hypnosis, Existential Therapy, Reality Therapy, Music Therapy.

She is working on pedagogies for learning in virtual environments. 

Pinckney Benedict

Guest Speaker

Director of the Center for Virtual Expression (VCeX)
College of Liberal Arts at Southern Illinois University

Pinckney Benedict graduated from Princeton University, where he worked primarily with the author Joyce Carol Oates, in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in English and from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1988 with an MFA in Fiction.

He has published a novel and three collections of short fiction, the most recent of which is  Miracle Boy and Other Stories. His work has been published in, among other magazines and anthologies, Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, the O. Henry Award series, the Pushcart Prize series, the Best New Stories from the South series, The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, and The Oxford Book of the American Short Story.

Benedict is the Director of the Center for Virtual Expression (VCeX) of the College of Liberal Arts at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and the founder and director of SIUC’s Digital Humanities Laboratory. 

Course aims

What you will learn 

  • Understand the main engineering applications in which digital twin technology is being used 
  • Explain the value of digital twin technology and model-based design in engineering practice 
  • Explain the difference between a simulation and a simulator 
  • Interpret the results of a MATLAB analysis 
  • Interpret the results of a Simulink simulation 
  • Explain different workflows to interface a digital twin to AR-VR-MR software, including playback, co-simulation, and integration.  
  • Implement a physical model for a component given a schematic representation 
  • Implement a data-driven model for a component given an experimental data set 
  • Playback the results of a simulation into AR-VR-MR software  
  • Run co-simulations between Simulink and AR-VR-MR software (UE4) 
  • Integrate a physical model in Simulink into AR-VR-MR software 
  • Model an engineering component using Simscape 
  • Optimise a design parameter in Simulink 
  • Critique the difference between white, grey, and black-box modelling approaches 
  • Specify a deployment pipeline for a digital twin in a production system 
  • Identify fidelity-performance trade-offs for simulations and real-time deployment  
  • Critique the role of emerging AR-VR-MR technologies in model-based engineering design 
  • Design an engineering model of a digital twin given a set of specifications and demonstrate integration within a 3D graphics simulator 
  • How to use AR and VR for modelling 
  • Fundamentals of augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality  
  • Building professional AR/VR applications  
  • The AR/VR landscape for tools, technologies, and services

Application

If you would like to discuss your application or any part of the application process before applying, please click Contact Us at the top of this page.

IT requirements

This course is delivered online using Microsoft Teams. You will be required to follow and implement the instructions we send you to fully access Microsoft Teams on the University of Oxford's secure IT network.

This course is delivered online; to participate you will need regular access to the Internet and a computer meeting our recommended Minimum computer specification.

It is advised to use headphones with working speakers and microphone.