Digital Twin Based Laboratory for Control Engineering Education

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has made online learning the main choice in learning modes. For control engineering education that requires substantial laboratory practices as part of the learning process, online learning is a challenge in itself. It is difficult for students to gain experience and understanding of physical phenomena through online learning. Two approaches are commonly used to provide learning experiences that resembles practices in a traditional laboratory, namely virtual laboratory and remote laboratory. The drawback of virtual laboratory is that simulation eliminate the interaction aspect with physical devices make students miss the mental experiences of dealing with physical objects that important for engineering students, while the remote laboratory requires high cost and less flexible. This paper proposes another approach to overcome the shortcomings by utilizing a technology known as Digital Twin. Digital Twin based laboratory provides digital or virtual twin of a physical system that are interconnected with one another via the internet. The interconnection of the physical system and its virtual twin preserve the physical interaction and also increase the flexibility of the laboratory. Preliminary implementation and experiments show that the propose approach works properly. Users are able to manipulate the real plant remotely, and to observe almost identical dynamics of the real plant and the 3D visualization of the virtual plant.