Digital twins in the minerals industry – a comprehensive review

ABSTRACT

Digital Twins (DT) have become popular in various industries to solve complex problems. A true DT allows for bidirectional real-time data flows between the physical and virtual worlds.

The term DT was often overused, leading to confusion about its capabilities therefore this paper provides a review of the current state of DT and its applications in the minerals industry. Existing literature shows a slow adoption of DTs in the minerals industry, which is largely due to challenges associated with geological unpredictability, legacy system integration, cost, skill gaps, cybersecurity, and lack of standards.

Combining immersive visualisation with real-time spatial computer graphics could improve the usability and acceptance of DTs in the minerals industry which has been used successfully in training while underexplored for operational scenarios. The study concludes by highlighting the need for further research to understand the effectiveness of such an approach in mineral operations.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital twins
• mining and mineral processing
• Industry 4.0
• internet of things
• digitalisation
• system integration
• extended reality
• corporate Metaverse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Queensland.