Empowering digital twins with eXtended reality collaborations

Background The advancements of Artificial Intelligence,Big Data Analytics,and the Internet of Things paved the path to the emergence and use of Digital Twins(DTs)as technologies to“twin”the life of a physical entity in different fields,ranging from industry to healthcare.At the same time,the advent of eXtended Reality(XR)in industrial and consumer electronics has provided novel paradigms that may be put to good use to visualize and interact with DTs.XR technologies can support human-to-human interactions for training and remote assistance and could transform DTs into collaborative intelligence tools.Methods We here present the Human Collaborative Intelligence empowered Digital Twin framework(HCLINT-DT)integrating human annotations(e.g.,textual and vocal)to allow the creation of an all-in-one-place resource to preserve such knowledge.This framework could be adopted in many fields,supporting users to learn how to carry out an unknown process or explore others’past experiences.Results The assessment of such a framework has involved implementing a DT supporting human annotations,reflected in both the physical world(Augmented Reality)and the virtual one(Virtual Reality).Con-clusions The outcomes of the interface design assessment confirm the interest in developing HCLINT-DT-based applications.Finally,we evaluated how the proposed framework could be translated into a manufacturing context.

Frontiers of collaborative intelligence systems

The development of information technology has propelled technological reform in artificial intelligence(AI).To address the needs of diversified and complex applications,AI has been increasingly trending towards intelligent,collaborative,and systematized development across different levels and tasks.Research on intelligent,collaborative and systematized AI can be divided into three levels:micro,meso,and macro.Firstly,the micro-level collaboration is illustrated through the introduction of swarm intelligence collaborative methods related to individuals collaboration and decision variables collaboration.Secondly,the meso-level collaboration is discussed in terms of multi-task collaboration and multi-party collaboration.Thirdly,the macro-level collaboration is primarily in the context of intelligent collaborative systems,such as terrestrial-satellite collaboration,space-air-ground collaboration,space-air-ground-air collaboration,vehicle-road-cloud collaboration and end-edge-cloud collaboration.Finally,this paper provides prospects on the future development of relevant fields from the perspectives of the micro,meso,and macro levels.

PERFORMANCE-BASED INTELLIGENT RESOURCE DESCRIPTION MODEL FOR INTERNET-BASED PRODUCT DESIGN

Issues on intelligent resource description and multiple intelligent resources integration for lntemet based collaborative design are analyzed. A performance-based intelligent resource description model for lnternet-based product design is proposed, which can help to create, store, manipulate and exchange intelligent resource description information for applications, tools and systems in Interact-based product design. A method to integrate multiple intelligent resources to fulfill a complex product design and analysis via lntemet is also proposed. A real project for improving the bearing system design of a turbo-expander with many intelligent resources in prominent universities is presented as a case study.

AI for Supporting the Freedom of Drawing

Artificial intelligence(AI)has recently been developing rapidly in image processing and generation.AI is not only starting to take over repetitive and tedious tasks but is also involved in creative activities.Drawing is one of the areas with the greatest potential for collaboration between humans and AI.It is an important approach to express various information,but due to the lack of appropriate knowledge and skills,ordinary people without long-time training are unable to draw freely.Although there have been various attempts at human-AI collaboration in drawing,it is difficult for researchers to consider the wide variety of specific problems and develop univer-sal methods due to the openness,improvisation,and individuality of drawing.In this paper,we first analysed the contents of drawing and the general creation process in detail.Second,we have described a mechanism for using AI to enable people to regain the freedom of drawing collaboratively.Finally,we have developed a framework that describes methods for analysing specific problems and quickly finding solutions by building connections between the influencing factors in drawing,the demands of humans,and possible implementa-tion options.The framework also reveals a broad scope of possibilities for applying AI to support people in drawing.

Artificial intelligence and statistics

Artificial intelligence(AI) is intrinsically data-driven.It calls for the application of statistical concepts through human-machine collaboration during the generation of data,the development of algorithms,and the evaluation of results.This paper discusses how such human-machine collaboration can be approached through the statistical concepts of population,question of interest,representativeness of training data,and scrutiny of results(PQRS).The PQRS workflow provides a conceptual framework for integrating statistical ideas with human input into AI products and researches.These ideas include experimental design principles of randomization and local control as well as the principle of stability to gain reproducibility and interpretability of algorithms and data results.We discuss the use of these principles in the contexts of self-driving cars,automated medical diagnoses,and examples from the authors' collaborative research.

Geoscience knowledge graph in the big data era

Since the beginning of the 21 st century,the geoscience research has been entering a significant transitional period with the establishment of a new knowledge system as the core and with the drive of big data as the means.It is a revolutionary leap in the research of geoscience knowledge discovery from the traditional encyclopedic discipline knowledge system to the computer-understandable and operable knowledge graph.Based on adopting the graph pattern of general knowledge representation,the geoscience knowledge graph expands the unique spatiotemporal features to the Geoscience knowledge,and integrates geoscience knowledge elements,such as map,text,and number,to establish an all-domain geoscience knowledge representation model.A federated,crowd intelligence-based collaborative method of constructing the geoscience knowledge graph is developed here,which realizes the construction of high-quality professional knowledge graph in collaboration with global geo-scientists.We also develop a method for constructing a dynamic knowledge graph of multi-modal geoscience data based on in-depth text analysis,which extracts geoscience knowledge from massive geoscience literature to construct the latest and most complete dynamic geoscience knowledge graph.A comprehensive and systematic geoscience knowledge graph can not only deepen the existing geoscience big data analysis,but also advance the construction of the high-precision geological time scale driven by big data,the compilation of intelligent maps driven by rules and data,and the geoscience knowledge evolution and reasoning analysis,among others.It will further expand the new directions of geoscience research driven by both data and knowledge,break new ground where geoscience,information science,and data science converge,realize the original innovation of the geoscience research and achieve major theoretical breakthroughs in the spatiotemporal big data research.