A Human Digital Twin for Worker-Centric Production

A human digital twin (HDT) is a virtual representation of a worker in cyberspace. Nevertheless, current research focusses mainly on HDTs for motoric work types, such as assembly. To fully integrate an HDT for workers in production, it is necessary that an HDT also displays cognitive processes like memorizing, thinking or reasoning. Such a concept can be used in information-based work, for example monitoring highly automated production systems, and contribute to the planning and control of production. Due to the high proportion of planning and decision-making processes, the efficiency of information-based work is determined in particular by the inner processes of the worker. An HDT can therefore help to describe current and future states of socio-technical work systems. Therefore, this paper presents a systematic literature review to explicitly derive the relevant components of an HDT for information-based work types. The elements of such an HDT and its environment are defined. Further, the current gaps in literature are identified. There are currently no real-world applications of such an HDT. Additionally, the value of multi-HDT systems must be evaluated more extensively.