Virtual Reality-Based Digital Twins: A Case Study on Pharmaceutical Cannabis

Digital Twins are digital equivalents of real-life objects. They allow producers to act immediately in case of (expected) deviations and to simulate effects of interventions based on real-life data. Digital Twin and eXtended Reality technologies (including Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality technologies), when coupled, are promising solutions to address the challenges of highly regulated crop production, namely the complexity of modern production environments for pharmaceutical cannabis, which are growing constantly as a result of legislative changes. Cannabis farms not only have to meet very high quality standards and regulatory requirements but also have to deal with high production and market uncertainties, including energy considerations. Thus, the main contributions of the research include an architecture design for eXtended-Reality-based Digital Twins for pharmaceutical cannabis production and a proof of concept, which was demonstrated at the Wageningen University Digital Twins conference. A convenience sampling method was used to recruit 30 participants who provided feedback on the application. The findings indicate that, despite 70% being unfamiliar with the concept, 80% of the participants were positive regarding the innovation and creativity.