The emergence of new technologies, including Industry 4.0, has spawned a new generation of connected, robotic and smart factories. With the digital revolution, the boundaries between the physical and digital world are shrinking, giving life to an interconnected 4.0 factory where employees, machines and products closely interact.
Industrial applications of Virtual Reality are transforming the way new products are designed, bringing new possibilities. Overall, the application of VR to the domain of industry is relevant since it greatly improves communication in product design and product development. The direct benefits are optimization of handling and operation times, proper use of materials and the execution of the right tasks at the right time. It helps to identify and avoid design errors in the early stages of the development process; it reduces the number of physical prototypes and saves time and cost for enterprises. Digital Twin using VR is considered a valuable tool for improving and accelerating product and process development in many industries, such as the automotive, aeronautic, construction and energy industries.
As is becoming increasingly recognized, virtual reality has great potential in providing safe and profitable learning experiences. In this context, the paper Podder et al. describes the first step for the realization of a VR learning environment for workers involved in the production of energy-efficient construction elements. To this aim, it employs a sort of digital twin of a purpose-built automated cut-saw machine serving as a novel Industry 4.0 component for the construction industry. It exploits both digital and physical prototypes, proxy and data to build and analyze the environment.
Another paper in the construction sector, Podkosova et al., provides an efficient and intuitive platform for early exploration of industrial building designs, enabling collaborative decision making, and facilitates the creation of more efficient and sustainable industrial constructions.
On the other hand, the paper Weistroffer et al. presents a framework for simulating a physics-based digital twin of a cobotic workstation and computing criterion used for safety and ergonomics.
In terms of AR, more and more applications for home and other indoor environments are becoming available; such applications allow, for instance, for interactively finding good arrangements of furniture, online ordering, or support for maintenance tasks. However, in many cases, the virtual 3D environment must first be reconstructed from the existing building, since these 3D models are usually not available to the users of those AR systems. This is the motivation for the paper Arnaud et al., which presents practical methods to reconstruct such 3D models using just a simple tablet.
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Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Summary
Keywords
virtual reality, industry 4.0, digital twin, mixed reality, industrial applications
Citation
Borro D, Zachmann G, Giannini F, Walczak K and Pedrocchi N (2022) Editorial: Digital Twin for Industry 4.0. Front. Virtual Real. 3:968054. doi: 10.3389/frvir.2022.968054
Received
13 June 2022
Accepted
17 June 2022
Published
25 August 2022
Volume
3 - 2022
Edited and reviewed by
Carolina Cruz-Neira, University of Central Florida, United States
Updates
Copyright
© 2022 Borro, Zachmann, Giannini, Walczak and Pedrocchi.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Diego Borro, dborro@ceit.es
This article was submitted to Virtual Reality in Industry, a section of the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.