This week, our team visited Sandvik again for a meeting and a tour of their facility. During the meeting, one of the engineers shared photos of actual equipment failure cases, giving us a better understanding of the types of failures that can occur in the rotary head system.

During the facility tour, although we did not get to see the rotary head of the DR416i specifically, we had the opportunity to observe rotary heads from other models. Seeing these components in person was impressive, especially because of their massive size. We also had the chance to see the complete DR416i machine, which was even larger than we had imagined, as well as the DR412i model that we had previously considered for our project.

Overall, this visit was a valuable experience for our team. Seeing the actual equipment helped us better understand its structure and operation while giving us a clearer perspective on the data we have been analyzing. It also helped us connect our previous data analysis with the physical equipment.

Looking ahead, our team will be participating in next week’s AI Day poster presentation, where we will have the opportunity to showcase our project and share our progress.

This week, we had the opportunity to hear from IPPD alumna Alyssa Caples, a Product Manager at Axon, who shared her experiences from the IPPD program and how she applies what she learned to her current role. She also provided valuable insights into the Preliminary Design Review (PDR), sharing her experiences and important considerations for preparing and delivering an effective presentation.

Project Progress

Our team also focused on visualizing the data provided by Sandvik. We developed an interactive web-based visualization tool to explore the dataset in greater detail and better understand the available machine signals. During this process, we discovered that the GNSS data covers a longer time period than the machine signal data. We discussed this issue with Sandvik, and they will investigate possible solutions to address the mismatch.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the university’s approval of the Siemens software license. To avoid further delays, we have started exploring alternative approaches as a backup plan to keep the project moving forward.

Next Step

Moving forward, we will continue analyzing the available data, improving our visualization tool, and evaluating potential alternatives while waiting for the software license approval.

Project Progress

This week, our team visited Sandvik’s office to present our Preliminary Design Review (PDR). During the presentation, we shared our project scope, customer needs, product design specifications, preliminary system architecture, and project roadmap. We received valuable feedback from the Sandvik team on how to improve our presentation, particularly by giving more attention to important technical slides and explaining key concepts in greater detail.

Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, our planned visit to see the actual rotary head in person had to be postponed. We will reschedule the visit for a later date, which will give us an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the equipment and its real-world operation.

We also received important guidance on our data analysis strategy. Before developing machine learning models, we need to thoroughly explore and visualize the available data to better understand its characteristics, identify meaningful patterns, and ensure that our analysis reflects the actual behavior of the rotary head. In addition, Sandvik provided us with actual failure reports, creating an opportunity to correlate historical failure events with our existing data. This will help us investigate potential relationships between equipment conditions and failures, providing a stronger foundation for future predictive modeling.

Next Step

Moving forward, our team will focus on exploring and visualizing the available data, investigating correlations between equipment measurements and historical failure events, and refining our technical approach based on the feedback received. These steps will help us better understand the system and identify promising directions for the next stage of our AI-Enhanced Digital Twin project.

This week, our team participated in a peer review session for the Preliminary Design Review (PDR). During the session, we presented our current PDR materials and received feedback from other teams on the clarity, organization, and technical content of our presentation. The review helped us identify areas that could be improved, including how we communicate our project motivation, system architecture, and overall design approach.

We also reviewed other teams’ presentations, which gave us additional ideas about how to better structure our own PDR and communicate technical information more effectively. Based on the feedback we received, we will continue refining our slides and presentation flow.

Next week, our team will visit Sandvik and present our PDR on-site. This will give us the opportunity to share our current progress directly with the company team, receive further feedback, and better understand how our proposed direction aligns with their expectations.

This week, we participated in a Guest Workshop on Elevator Pitches led by Dr. Lawrence Tinker, Assistant Director for the Engineering Innovation Institute. During the workshop, we learned how to effectively communicate and promote our project by clearly presenting the problem we are trying to solve, our proposed solution, and the potential impact and value of the project. The workshop emphasized the importance of telling the story of a project step by step so that the audience can quickly understand both the need and the value behind the solution.

We also had the opportunity to practice our own elevator pitch during the session. After presenting, we received feedback on how to make our message clearer, more concise, and more engaging. This exercise helped us identify areas for improvement and gave us a better understanding of how to communicate our project effectively to different audiences.

Project Progress

This week, our team continued reviewing the rotary head data and CAD models provided by Sandvik and presented our findings to our coach and liaison. Through these discussions, we identified several additional data needs and further clarified the project scope, including confirming that our target system will be the DR412. We also learned more about some of the major sources of downtime, such as the bearing and gear head, which will help guide our future analysis.

In addition, we confirmed our PDR site visit for October 9 and continued preparing for the upcoming Preliminary Design Review.

Next Steps

Next week, we plan to continue preparing our PDR documentation and presentation, gain access to the Siemens software environment, and begin exploring relevant digital twin methodologies that may support our project.

This week, Sandvik provided our team with rotary head data as well as blueprints and CAD files for several internal components, allowing us to begin a more detailed technical investigation of the system. We started by reviewing the available data and exploring what types of predictions could potentially be developed from the parameters currently provided. At the same time, we identified additional information that may be needed to support future analysis, such as temperature-related measurements and more detailed parameters for the components inside the rotary head. These findings will help us determine what additional data we should request from Sandvik as the project moves forward.

For the mechanical components, we began reviewing the provided CAD files and blueprints to better understand the structure and geometry of the rotary head. We are also investigating how these CAD models can be imported, processed, and visualized in Blender and SolidWorks to support the development of the 3D representation for our digital twin. We are currently waiting for access to the Siemens software environment, so we have not yet been able to begin hands-on development or testing within Siemens. In the meantime, we are using this period to better understand the available data, component models, and potential system workflow so that we can move forward more efficiently once access is granted.

In addition to the technical exploration, our team also completed several important project-planning deliverables this week, including the Product Design Specifications (PDS), Project Roadmap, and Risk Table. These documents helped us further define the project requirements, development timeline, and potential risks. We also submitted them to our coach for review and feedback so that we can refine our plans and maintain alignment with the overall project goals.

Welcome to our first blog post! We are Twin Torque, working with Sandvik on an AI-Enhanced Digital Twin project. The goal of this project is to explore how digital twin technologies, simulation, data, and artificial intelligence can be integrated to better represent real-world systems and support future analysis and decision-making. Throughout the semester, our team will work closely with Sandvik, with guidance from our coach, Dr. Jorg Peters, and company liaison, Mr. Atif Khan, to understand their current workflow, identify key challenges, and develop a practical solution that aligns with their engineering needs.

This week, we held meetings with our coach and company liaison to gain a better understanding of the project background and Sandvik’s current challenges. During these discussions, we clarified the overall project direction, reviewed the types of data that may be available to us, and discussed potential short-, mid-, and long-term development goals for the project. Within the team, we also began defining and assigning responsibilities so that each member can contribute effectively based on their background and expertise.

Next week, our main focus will be to become more familiar with the Siemens software environment and the available project data. We plan to explore the relevant Siemens tools, understand how the data is structured and can be accessed, and identify how these resources may be incorporated into our digital twin development workflow. This will help us establish a stronger technical foundation before moving into the next stage of the project.

Team Members
Rudra Patel, AIS
Sharath Talur Subramanian, AIS
Kanakavalli Muraharisetty, CISE
Sutej Boyapati, CISE
Garrett Elliott, MechE
Syu-Huei Huang, ECE