Modeling and simulation experts attend NATO human digital twin research meeting

By Shane Klestinski, Associate Editor

Approximately 75 modeling and simulation professionals attended a NATO research specialist meeting (RSM), “Human Digital Twin in the Military: Findings and Perspectives,” at the Central Florida Tech Grove in Orlando, Florida, Dec. 10-12, 2024.

 

Defined on its most basic, general level, a digital twin is a digital representation that can be a replica of almost anything, such as a piece of equipment, a vehicle (from cars to space shuttles), a real-world system – or in the medical field, the human body.

 

“What makes a digital twin special is that it’s updated in concert as the real-world system changes,” said Michael Miller, Ph.D., professor of systems engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology, who co-chaired the event and worked with an international committee that selected the paper presentations and keynote addresses featured at the meeting. “The connection that we’re trying to represent in a specific system and understand its state is really important.”

 

Miller cited an early example of the digital twin concept – although it was not actually digital – in 1970 when NASA engineers improvised in response to catastrophic complications that endangered the Apollo 13 mission. What was supposed to be a moon landing became a harrowing experience; the crew was lucky to simply survive, largely thanks to the minds NASA had working the problems. (The 1995 movie, “Apollo 13,” starring Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise later dramatized these efforts.)

 

“They had to represent and physically modify what was going on with the spacecraft on the ground so they could tell the astronauts what they needed to do to survive the mission,” Miller said. “As they were changing things on the spacecraft, they were changing what they had on the ground so they always had a remote representation of the real-world system.”

 

Medical professionals seek to employ human digital twin (HDT) technology to help determine a patient’s treatment, similar to how maintenance workers can use digital twin tech to maximize equipment during its service lifecycle by suggesting specific maintenance procedures and preemptive replacement of parts before they wear out. Like predicting failures of components in a machine on a factory floor, by taking a similar approach, doctors hope to use HDT tech to help patients take preventative steps against various physiological problems to maintain good health and quality of life.

 

“These digital twins may be used to understand medical treatments a patient may need, or the state of somebody’s health,” Miller said. “From a learning perspective, we might want to understand somebody’s academic knowledge and keep a digital record, or a model, of their education. They may also be used in designing systems where we have biomechanical models of humans we can place into digital models of systems we’re designing and understand how they would use those systems through those models.”

 

The RSM brought specialists and experts in digital twin technology together to have a conversation on human digital twin efforts, specifically for the military.

 

Crystal Maraj, Ph.D., a research assistant professor at UCF’s Institute for Simulation and Training, explained that HDT technology is a ground-breaking topic that comes with certain challenges because “it hasn’t really been tackled before.” Maraj also served as one of the coordinators who planned the event, reviewed abstracts and papers submitted to the RSM, and she served as the local chair during the meeting.

 

“We discussed HDT in the context of the meeting [focused] on the modeling aspects,” Maraj said. “Specifically, how the body was modeled and how the data was taken and transformed into a digital representation, which could then turn back and explain to the human what was happening.”

 

This particular meeting served to identify NATO nations’ state-of-the-art work in HDT with military and medical applications. The three-day event featured six keynote speakers and 21 technical presentations that covered various aspects of HDT technology to attendees from 12 countries. It also represented an exploratory effort to determine where emphasis on where future HDT work should be.

 

“It’s really to figure out if there’s enough material on where the state of the art is to potentially create a reoccurring working group out of it,” said Casey Pirnstill, Ph.D., a modeling and simulation technical expert at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Pirnstill was another RSM coordinator, and he drove technical discussion for recommendations to NATO for next steps on HDT technology.

 

According to Maraj, the benefits HDT tech has to offer the warfighter include creating a virtual representation and adding information, for example, for someone operating in a tank who is overworked or cognitively overloaded with too much information. In such a scenario, an HDT system can feed information to a digital version of the warfighter, which a bimodal process turns around to aid the individual by suggesting strategies to help mitigate stress levels. The UCF team led by Grace Bochenek, Ph.D., is currently working to resolve such military-related issues.

 

“Strategies may include delegating work to other warfighters in the tank, or it may mean focusing on a different task,” Maraj said. “It all depends on what that task is, but it can help alleviate or offset some of the work that might be too overwhelming to the human. That’s an area where HDT tech can help inform the warfighter of ways to self-regulate how they are operating in that environment.”

 

Maraj said that multiple presenters spoke of using sensors on individuals and tanks that relay the information. If evaluators added sensors to existing or future technologies, they could store the information they received in a database, which could help enhance how soldiers think when training, conducting a mission, or help inform the chain of command on making decisions in the future.

 

The technical sessions and keynotes provided attendees with several insights. Miller noted that he particularly enjoyed the keynote by Professor Giovanni Saggio of the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

 

“He really challenged us to think a lot about the true definitions of the human digital twin and variations of those definitions,” Miller said. “I think it was really important to step back and think about those concepts.”

 

Maraj saw particular value in the conversations that emphasized breaking down of the “human digital twin” definition, and the necessity of standardized terminology, policies and procedures.

 

“It’s about how we get people at decision-making levels to understand the importance and significance of having these standards, not just for the U.S., but for our NATO-allied countries so we can all be on the same page on these terms,” Maraj said. “In operational definitions, we all speak about HDT in our own siloed professions and domains.”

 

Pirnstill said he learned a lot from Elizabeth Baron’s keynote on “Adopting Process-Based Intuitive and Intelligent Solutions for Industry and Healthcare.” Baron previously worked at Ford Motor Company where she employed the use of digital rendering of vehicles for human benefit, which became the standard process for every Ford vehicle. Pirnstill noted that Baron’s work now takes what she learned providing ergonomic value and comfort in the automobile industry, and now focuses on the medical significance of those lessons.

 

Pirnstill explained that he hoped participants left this meeting with a better understanding of the advances made by leaders in the HDT technology field, especially among NATO members.

 

“Another big takeaway would be [a better appreciation of] collaboration and contacts they can now work with the future – or understanding more data and leveraging it – versus recreating that work again, not knowing about it,” Pirnstill said.

 

Pirnstill recommended that any modeling and simulation professionals who are fortunate enough that they can be part of such a processes involving HDT, should participate.

 

“For those who work in this area and are leading, being a part of these early, joint-nation recommendations on where to go next and being a part of this conversation, will allow them to drive the narrative toward their work and put a spotlight on [HDT technology], especially if it’s not well represented,” Pirnstill said. “It can be a big thing toward potentially driving future [research] funding to address critical gaps.”

 

According to Miller, one of the biggest benefits participants received from attending involved a firmer grasp of the breadth of human modeling and twin technologies.

 

“The attendees constantly pointed out that they go to a lot of conferences that talk about the biomechanics or cognitive modeling of humans [among other related topics],” Miller said. “But, many of them noted that this was the first conference where we were really talking about all aspects of the human we were trying to model within a framework.”

 

Maraj also considered the networking opportunities that took place during the RSM to be one of the most valuable takeaways for participants. She emphasized that building on relationships with NATO allies and colleagues gave HDT experts a stronger understanding of their peers’ research and better positioned them to tackle problems as a collective.

 

“We learned to constructively and critically evaluate our HDT research, identifying opportunities for future collaboration focused on the warfighter,” Maraj said. “Our ultimate goal is to enhance warfighter performance, making them more efficient and more effective.”