As a world’s leading F1 fleet,
British team McLaren has started digital transformation before themselves even realized
it. We have mentioned the Maserati is applying digital twins in our previous
post. It’s clear to see how such benefits
would be welcomed in a manufacturing environment, one in which every minute of
uptime carries a significant financial imperative. On the design side, digital
twins could also improve product design and development without the need to
produce physical prototypes. As well as allowing engineers to experiment with
more diverse solutions to problems, and more inventive designs.
Now McLaren is using the
same technology for the competition.
Winning
a Formula 1 race is no longer just about building the fastest car, hiring the
bravest driver and praying for luck. These days, when a McLaren team races in
Monaco or Singapore, it beams data from hundreds of sensors wired in the car to
Woking, England. There, analysts study that data and use complex computer
models to relay optimal race strategies back to the driver.
The
technology is currently being employed to improve driver and car performance in
the high-stakes world of Formula 1. Virtually, the digital twin runs exactly
the same race as the physical car, including road conditions, weather and
temperature. Such a system can help prevent costly – and potentially,
life-threatening – malfunctions through enhanced predictive analysis
capabilities.
Formula
1 created the first wave of connected cars and decades of extracting big data
from sensors from them has led McLaren to create very accurate simulations of
the car, its operating environment and, therefore its likely performance.
15
years ago, we went one step further and built an immersive simulator that puts
the driver at the heart of the virtual car. This drastically reduced the time
it took to develop the product and predict its performance before it was even
built.
As
nowadays, businesses can create a digital twin of its product, or in this
example, a car.
The
digital twin can answer questions such as which hybrid battery you should fit
into your vehicle, the trade-off between comfort and handling or how stability
control feels to the driver. It also means that anyone – developers, supply
chain and even customers – anywhere in the world who has the same simulator can
‘drive’ and experience this new product, in real time, as it develops.
In
the wider commercial world, it’s possible to combine high-performance analytics
expertise with advanced sensor, simulation and software technology to rapidly
generate prototypes using thousands of variations to deliver the right product
for the right market.
The
combination of intelligence from physical sensors and the digital twin will
enable businesses to ‘prototype’ a product very quickly and ultimately brings
it to market more quickly.
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