The human-digital twin in the manufacturing industry: Current perspectives and a glimpse of future

The need to comply with shorter product life-cycles, diversified market demandsand increased global competitiveness is leading to a dramatic increase in production systems requirements in terms of flexibility and responsiveness. Industry 4.0 and its push for digitalisation are becoming a pervasive reality impacting almost each phase of the company’s life cycle, from business strategy and process design to daily operational activities. As a resulting drawback, an increasing burden is put on the workers, who are requested to operate and interact with complex systems, under challenging conditions. Furthermore, decision-making and control systems consider humans as an external and unpredictable element. New technological solutions are arising to address such challenges. Digital Twins can be applied to represent humans in the digital world, including their intents, behaviours, conditions and emotions, providing the ground for human-aware operations and planning. This chapter aims to provide an overview about most recent advancements and results applying digital twins to support the design, the implementation and the operations of humancentric production systems.