Helbling turning to digital twins

The engineering and consulting firm Helbling is increasingly working with what are known as digital twins for the development of mechatronic systems. The concept offers Helbling specialists a digital environment for interdisciplinary collaborations, in which they are able to uncover and initiate measures to minimize technical risks before a prototype reaches the implementation stage. This can lead to significant reductions in the required development time in addition to cutting costs, Helbling writes in a specialist article.

The term digital twin essentially refers to a virtual representation of a product “in the entirety of its physical behavior”. Digital twins serve as a kind of platform for the specialists at Helbling to work together on issues that crop up in the early development process on account of the interdisciplinary approach and which could otherwise only be answered by testing prototypes.

With central elements such as mechanics, sensors, electronics, firmware and software, mechatronic systems are interdisciplinary in nature from the bottom up. The use of digital twins is therefore particularly useful in such instances. For example, Helbling was able to complete the commissioning and testing of a system much faster because a digital twin allowed “the degree of maturity of the software and firmware” to be substantially increased even prior to being properly implemented in the real hardware.

At times, a lack of interfaces has been somewhat of an obstacle to the development process. For example, systems providers of sensors, control hardware and software as well as development environments frequently offer little in the way of support for the digital integration of third-party modules. For this reason, Helbling is working specifically on approaches for robust digital models in which elements from a variety of providers interact correctly and harmoniously.