Developing a digital twin for a laboratory ball mill operation – a step towards mining metaverse

Digital twins (DTs) are transforming business operations across industries through accurate replication of physical entities using the Internet of Things and big data analytics. Despite booming progress in the manufacturing, aerospace and buildings sectors, the adoption of DTs in the minerals industry has been slow, and integration with efficient visualisation and user interactions has not been fully optimised to achieve maximum fidelity and usability. One promising avenue for enhancing DT capabilities is the utilisation of extended reality (XR) technologies, which also hold great potential for realising an industrial metaverse where real-world business activities can be conducted in a virtual space. This article proposes a cost-effective and scalable approach to developing a DT with real-time monitoring and control capabilities for a ball mill operation, a widely used processing equipment in the minerals industry. The case study showcases two approaches with different levels of system integration by leveraging serious game development platforms, toolkits and workflows.