Falcon Digital Twin Integration Platform

Case Study Overview

Using digital twins for manufacturing and warehouse automation

Using digital twins for manufacturing and warehouse automation

The rapid advancement of technology and the rise of e-commerce have brought about a significant shift in the warehousing industry. Digital transformation has enabled warehouses to move away from manual processes and paper-based systems towards more data-driven, automated solutions that can provide real-time insights and visibility into warehouse operations.

To keep up with the changing demands of consumers and businesses, warehouses are undergoing a digital transformation. They are leveraging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and automation to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance the user experience. This has led to the emergence of digital twins, which are real-time simulations of physical warehouses that provide a virtual replica of the warehouse environment.

In a warehouse environment, a digital twin virtually replicates a physical warehouse, providing a real-time simulation of its objects, processes, and systems. This encompasses everything present within or interacting with the warehouse, such as the building structure, machinery for handling materials, inventory, traffic controllers, and robots.

Falcon

Duality, a US-based multidisciplinary team, aims to accurately simulate complex environmental scenarios that are used to provide insights through real-time feedback from sensors and machines. To this end, Duality created Falcon, an end-to-end digital twins integration platform.

Falcon empowers its users to handle intricate projects by integrating leading solutions and standards into a single platform. In a warehouse environment, the user must assess their robotic fleet deployment in a way that ensures safety, while keeping costs and disruptions to a minimum.

How does it work?

The Falcon system incorporates accurate physics-based digital twins of an AMR fleet and a warehouse environment. By utilising Duality’s Peregrine API to connect the Warehouse Management System and the Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) autonomy stack to Falcon, deployment scenarios can be simulated safely without interfering with ongoing warehouse operations. The user can author the modular scenarios to simulate them in order to learn about the necessary number of robots and verify the integration of the Warehouse Management System and AMR fleet.

With the help of Falcon, the user is able to develop and deploy autonomous robotic systems and fleets efficiently and safely. Through Falcon’s out-of-the-box integration, the user can run their complete autonomy stack and stream real-time data over ROS/ROS2 or other protocols all in a virtual environment. Therefore, Falcon facilitates the testing and validation stage while removing the possibility of causing any harm to the hardware.

Through real-time co-simulation that involves multiple stakeholders and human input, the deployment of robots and fleets in shared human-robot environments is made possible. This process ensures safe implementation in complex working environments.

By simulating accurate, site-specific, and photo-realistic environments, the results obtained are readily deployable in the warehouse environment and can speed up the deployment process. This enables a faster and safer translation of simulation work into the real-world environment.

What are the benefits?

Through the use of a warehouse digital twin, it becomes possible to conduct virtual system testing and assess the anticipated performance improvements resulting from modifications to the layout, software, or upgrades before implementation in the physical environment. This feature can prove critical in avoiding system downtime or performance deterioration in the physical twin.

Falcon can provide several other important benefits, including:

• Improved operational efficiency: Falcon allows for real-time monitoring of the warehouse’s processes and systems, enabling the identification of bottlenecks and inefficiencies. By simulating different scenarios and testing various optimisation strategies, it can help to identify the most effective solutions for improving operational efficiency.
• Enhanced decision-making: With access to real-time data, warehouse managers can make informed decisions about inventory management, staffing, and other critical aspects of warehouse operations. This can help to reduce costs, improve productivity, and enhance customer satisfaction.
• Risk mitigation: Falcon can help to identify potential safety hazards within the warehouse environment and simulate different scenarios to test risk mitigation strategies. This can help to improve overall safety and reduce the risk of accidents.

Overall, the use of digital twins in a warehouse environment can lead to significant improvements in operational efficiency, decision-making, maintenance, and risk mitigation, ultimately resulting in a more productive and safer warehouse environment.

Challenges and lessons learned

As is the case with other industries, market acceptance is difficult to navigate. With a lot of new technologies, getting the buy-in is key, and Duality is taking several steps to make the process smoother. One effective approach is to demonstrate the benefits of using a digital twin. Key stakeholders are also involved early in the process, gathering their input and feedback to ensure that the digital twin meets their needs and requirements.

In this way, presenting not only the benefits but also the success stories of implementing digital twins helps resolve another challenge: the industry fails to benefit from digital twin technologies due to lack of awareness. The early-on implementation of a digital twin of a warehouse environment can prevent any hurdles in the physical environment, and iterate more rapidly. In terms of lessons learned, Duality emphasises that customers should not wait until a project is already underway to implement digital technologies and build a system virtually first.

Standardisation of Digital Twin technologies

For the development of digital twins, one of the challenges today is that there is no standard across industries. Currently, baseline guidance that all digital twins share does not exist, and therefore the development of interoperable digital twins and digital twin platforms is impossible. The Duality team has already presented their ideas around standardisation for digital twins to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Digital Twins Consortium (DTC).

The objective is to start the conversation and to lay the framework and groundwork to set the standard of what a digital twin is. This is especially important considering that there generally is a lot of confusion between 3D assets, IOT digital twins, or predictive digital twins.

To conclude, the digital transformation of warehouses is a key factor in the evolution of the warehousing industry, enabling warehouses to adapt to changing market demands and providing greater operational efficiency, cost savings, and customer satisfaction.

Special thanks to Brian Donovan, Head of Global GTM at Duality, for taking the time to participate in the interview for our project, whose valuable insights have been instrumental in shaping the final outcome.