Real-time measurement methods for digital twins

The mapping of digital twins to physical entities suffers from a lack of real-time capability, which affects the twin’s ability to reflect the actual status of the equipment accurately. In manufacturing, latency in critical information, such as industrial equipment parameters, product processing status, and tool usage conditions, can lead to discrepancies between the information displayed on human-machine interfaces and the actual conditions, increasing the risk of incorrect decisions. To address such issues, this paper focuses on the synchronization between digital twins and physical entities in industrial production processes. This paper designs a measurement method for overall time latency and node-level latency in the digital twin process, applies it to a production unit at a forging enterprise, analyzes key factors affecting the real-time performance of digital twins, and discusses methods to improve real-time synchronization between virtual and physical systems. The proposed latency measurement method is universally applicable. It enables researchers to conduct measurements using low-cost tools. Simultaneously, this method can rapidly quantify both types of latency between virtual and physical systems: end-to-end latency and node-level latency. It provides a reliable real-time evaluation approach for digital twins during engineering design and application stages.