Those were the exact famous words spoken from Apollo 13 on April 13, 1970, when a series of catastrophic failures jeopardized the mission and the lives of the crew as they floated in space 210,000 miles from Earth. It was more good planning than fortune that saved the astronauts, as NASA had an exact replica of the Apollo spacecraft that provided critical decision support and allowed the crew to return safely. NASA had a digital twin back on Earth representing the space module in the form of complex simulators that enabled them to evaluate various potential solutions before instructions were relayed to the crew far from home. The rest is history.
You probably have heard the term digital twin. In the past 5 years or so that the term has entered the modern lexicon and become part of the technology landscape. Practitioners have exact replicas of engines, computer systems, and of course the human body which help them to run simulations and perform tests in ways that would otherwise be impossible.
The concept of digital twins has in recent years been applied to agriculture. Companies that you might not associate with agriculture like IBM, Microsoft, and Siemens are attempting to create an arc between their experience with this technology in their traditional businesses and the optimization of agriculture. The problem is that these organizations, and many others like them, simply do not have exact replicas of the agricultural systems where the food is grown. LandScan recognizes this disconnect.
Simulations, models, and decision support systems will never work to their potential in agriculture without an exact replica, a true digital twin, of the basic unit for food production, the farm field. LandScan’s pending patent titled “Precision Site Characterization Using Digital Twin” is enabled by our unique suite of technologies to produce an exact replica of farm fields. These technologies are used to create information infrastructure for agriculture via our Platform for Discovery. Agriculture will never be the same.
“It’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow”
