Picture credit - www.geve.co.uk

Exeter hosts Digital Twinning event

Industrial digitisalisation was on the agenda at University of Exeter’s recent Innovation Day: Developing Digital Twinning collaborations in an Engineering context.

Digital Twinning is a topic of concern for many companies right now, and academics in the College of Engineering Mathematics and Physical Sciences are working at the cutting edge. 

The invite-only networking event gave attendees an exciting opportunity to develop their thinking and collaborative opportunities in this much talked about element of Industry 4.0.

 A number of companies including Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Babcock, AECOM, Bosch and Leonardo came to discuss recent developments and to identify opportunities for digital twins in their manufacturing and operations.

Following keynote talks from Prof Richard Everson, director of the University’s Institute for Data Science and AI and Jon Parsons (Rolls-Royce) who set out the current technology and industry landscapes around digital twinning, the workshop explored the challenges industries faces and showcased some of the University’s technical capabilities in uncertainty quantification, computational engineering and simulation thorough presentations and workshops.

Delegates also enjoyed a demonstration of an AI system developed as part an EPSRC funded project to use virtual solutions in a water engineering context and an update on ISCF funding opportunities from Lynne McGregor from UK Research & Innovation’s Made Smarter Challenge team.  

Nick Crew, Operations Manager at Airbus said: “The digital twin event hosted by UoE was immensely valuable to our business. The rich mixture of companies and talent created some opportunities we will definitely be following up on. UoE really understand what's needed by industry and have the capability to deliver.”

Professor Chris Smith, deputy Associate Dean for Industry at the University of Exeter said: “This event format works really well: bringing together our expertise and our industry partners to find ways to work collaboratively together for better, more innovative and more productive outcomes that ultimately will benefit the UK economy.

“This is an exciting space to be working in as our partners in the South West and beyond look to harness the opportunities presented by Industry 4.0.”

Date: 3 May 2019