Digital twin enhanced human-machine interaction in product lifecycle

Human-machine interaction (HMI) is a key technology for implementing smart manufacturing, which primarily focuses on the issues of communication, interaction, and cooperation between humans and machines. HMI has been widely studied in product lifecycle including product design, manufacturing, and service, but the efficiency and safety still cannot meet the new requirements for smart manufacturing along with new emerging technologies (e.g., big data, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, etc.). Digital twin (DT), as a new technology to realize cyber-physical integration, provides a new chance to address the above problems. Using a five-dimension DT model driven by real-time data, HMI will generate a more flexible interactive mode to improve machine efficiency and operation safety. In this paper, HMI in product lifecycle is investigated first, and the shortness and new requirements are analyzed, then a DT enhanced HMI framework is proposed to address the shortness. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.