The announcement will officially take place in Ottawa on June 4, but representatives of the governments of Canada and France took advantage of the Vivatech conference in Paris to lift the veil on the creation of an alliance for digital twins at which they hope to add more members soon.
The alliance brings together business people and companies from both countries who are committed to working closely to promote digital twin technology, which combines modeling and artificial intelligence. They will produce a directory of companies and technology specialists which aims to make it more accessible to potential business partners.
The Canada-France Alliance for Digital Twins was unveiled at Vivatech by the Canadian Ambassador to France, Stéphane Dion. “What common problems do France and Canada have? Productivity growth, labor shortages and a pollution problem they all need to solve. Artificial intelligence, if done well, will be part of the solution,” he explained to Le Devoir.
The Canadian ambassador as well as the French and Canadian leaders of the alliance also invited African countries to join this grouping which is expected to expand. “The innovations we see here [à Vivatech] have an important role to play, but also those of other companies in France and elsewhere. »
Shawinigan featured
The alliance will orbit in particular around the DigiHub in Shawinigan, a non-profit organization which acts as a workspace for the creation of businesses and the development of new technologies. “Digital twins offer an exceptional opportunity to improve industrial processes and reduce our carbon footprint,” DigiHub CEO Philippe Nadeau told Vivatech.
The DigiHub will act as an experimentation space for the alliance. Digital twins are faithful digital reproductions of objects, places or organisms that make it possible to model and simulate different scenarios to better understand their impact in the real world. Emerging technology can be augmented with artificial intelligence applications to predict behaviors or optimize processes, all at a lower cost than doing so in the real world.
On the industrial side, digital twins of production lines can help reduce unnecessary costs associated with breakdowns or deficiencies in product assembly. Many companies believe they can substantially reduce their environmental impact using this technology, which helps reduce unnecessary travel and excessive resource consumption.
Mining companies or the health sector, as well as urban planners or manufacturers, are already using digital twin applications in their processes.
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