Beyond Digital Twins: Phygital Twins for Neuroergonomics in Human-Robot Interaction

The changes in a DT automatically mirror and affect the status of its PT: the data flows bi-directionally (Van der Valk et al., 2020) and in real time between twins in digital and physical worlds, possibly without any human intervention (Liu et al., 2022) through the DT-driven control of an actuated PT. Phygital Twins in Human-Robot Interaction Performing holistic, physical, and reality-based interaction with a robotic system is more intuitive for the user than contactless gestures to program or command the device and change its state to accomplish a task (Jacob et al., 2008; Heun et al., 2013; Blackler et al., 2019; Ravichandar et al., 2020). [...]the same PT can be represented (on the right) by a PDT, based on a virtual human “wearing” a real exoskeleton (identical to the one in the real-world context and, possibly, sustained by a mannequin) into a laboratory. After obtaining the informed consent of the worker in the PT system, the experts can also update the remote wearable robot software according to their predictions. [...]the PDTs enable intuitive phygital interactions with experts to assess and improve the PT.