Using digital twins to bridge the gap between engineering education and industry

As factories become more automated and digitally connected, the challenge is no longer only how to build advanced systems, but how to prepare people to understand, operate and improve them.

Electrical engineering researcher Lydia Slippe sees digital twins as a practical bridge between engineering education and the realities of modern industry, giving students and developing engineers a safer environment to learn how physical systems behave before working directly with real equipment.

Lydia Slippe’s interest in this challenge grew from a professional journey that has placed her on both sides of technical learning. Her earlier experience in aviation maintenance required practical troubleshooting, careful interpretation of system behaviour and disciplined decision-making in safety-conscious environments.

Graduate work in electrical engineering later introduced her to collaborative robotics, simulation and digital-twin development.

That combination shaped a question that extends beyond robotics itself: how can engineering education give students more meaningful exposure to real industrial systems when access to physical equipment, laboratory time and repeated hands-on practice may be limited?

For Slippe, digital twins offer one possible answer.

A digital twin can give learners a virtual representation of a physical system where they can observe behaviour, test sequences, make changes and understand the consequences of engineering decisions before those decisions are transferred to real hardware.

The value is not simply in creating an attractive simulation. It is in using the virtual environment as a learning space that connects theory with practical implementation.

Slippe encountered this potential directly through graduate work involving a UR3 collaborative robot and Simumatik. The digital environment allowed robot behaviour and pick-and-place sequences to be developed, visualised and debugged before execution on the physical robot.

Working across both environments reinforced the educational value of seeing how a concept moves from a model to a real machine.

For students, that transition can make abstract engineering ideas easier to understand. Concepts such as robot motion, task sequencing, coordinate relationships, trajectory design and system limitations become more concrete when learners can observe how their decisions affect a simulated machine and then compare that behaviour with physical execution.

Slippe’s work also included developing digital-twin educational materials intended to help students understand robot kinematics and the relationship between simulated and real systems.

Her interest is therefore not limited to using digital twins as engineering tools; it includes their potential as teaching tools that can help developing engineers build practical confidence.

This matters as industrial technology becomes more complex. Modern engineering workplaces increasingly combine automation, sensing, software, data and physical equipment. Students may understand individual concepts in the classroom but still face a difficult transition when asked to integrate those concepts around a real industrial system.

Digital environments can help narrow that gap by allowing repeated practice without exposing equipment to every beginner error. A learner can test a sequence, identify a mistake, make an adjustment and observe the result. That cycle can encourage experimentation while preserving the importance of eventually validating the work on physical hardware.

Slippe does not see simulation as a substitute for hands-on engineering. Her experience with the UR3 reinforced the opposite lesson: virtual work becomes most valuable when learners understand that the physical system remains the final test. Real hardware introduces tolerances, positioning differences, operating constraints and other conditions that a simulation cannot reproduce perfectly.

For this reason, she sees the strongest educational model as one that deliberately connects the digital and physical worlds. Students can first use a digital twin to develop understanding and troubleshoot ideas, then transfer validated logic to real equipment and study the differences between expected and actual behaviour.

That approach could also make engineering training more accessible in settings where every learner cannot have continuous access to expensive industrial hardware. A well-designed digital environment can provide additional practice opportunities while laboratory sessions are reserved for the critical experience of working with the physical system.

The broader need is becoming increasingly visible. As intelligent factories evolve, workforce readiness is emerging alongside technology development as an industrial challenge. Engineers and technicians must not only know that advanced tools exist; they need opportunities to understand how those tools interact with real processes and how to make sound decisions when systems do not behave exactly as expected.

Slippe’s perspective is shaped by the practical discipline of aviation maintenance, where technical knowledge must ultimately translate into correct action. She carries the same principle into engineering education: learning is strongest when students can connect what they know theoretically with what they can observe, test, troubleshoot and validate.

Her vision therefore places digital twins at the intersection of education and industry. Used effectively, they can become more than virtual copies of machines. They can become environments where future engineers learn to think through technical problems, understand system behaviour and prepare for the responsibilities of working with real equipment.

In conclusion, Lydia Slippe’s work points toward a human-centred role for digital technology in engineering. As automation advances, preparing people to work confidently with increasingly complex systems will be just as important as improving the machines themselves.

Digital twins can help close that gap by giving learners a practical path from classroom concepts to industrial experience.

“The value of a digital twin in education is not simply that students can see a virtual machine. It is that they can develop an idea, test it, understand what changes, and then connect that learning to the behaviour of real equipment.”