Coffee Twin: An Interactive Digital Twin System Featuring Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Voice Interaction
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The increasing digitalization of industrial environments has led to the emergence of new paradigms such as Digital Twins (DTs), which enable real-time connections between physical assets and their virtual counterparts. In this context, the Coffee Twin system was developed as a modular and controlled demonstrator to explore, present, and validate the integration of DT technology with Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and voice-based interaction. A coffee machine was selected as the case study due to its manageable complexity, low-risk operation, and potential to illustrate concepts that can later be extended to more complex industrial systems. The system architecture is centered on a Raspberry Pi, which supports local data acquisition from temperature and humidity sensors, mechanical actuation through a servo motor, and remote control via a smart switch. To interact with the system, three software applications were developed: a Web application, an AR application for contextual visualization and remote interaction, and a VR application that recreates the operation of the machine within an immersive 3D environment. Beyond the technical implementation, the prototype was evaluated in demonstration and user-testing sessions in which 80 participants, mostly secondary-school pupils and university students, completed a coffee-making task across the three applications and then answered a System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire. The analysis of the 80 valid responses yielded a mean SUS score of 69.2 (standard deviation 15.9; 95% confidence interval [65.7, 72.8]), which corresponds to acceptable, slightly above-average usability and indicates that combining real-time sensing, remote actuation, and multimodal interaction in a single low-cost platform is perceived as usable across a heterogeneous, predominantly non-expert audience. The main contribution of this work is therefore not a new Digital Twin algorithm, but an accessible, modular, and reproducible integration of Web, AR, VR, and voice interaction around a physical asset, supported by usability evidence. Overall, Coffee Twin shows how a low-cost and multimodal DT demonstrator can support the communication, experimentation, and early exploration of Industry 4.0 concepts in educational and pre-industrial settings.
Source: Computers
Institution: Universidade Politécnica de Viana do Castelo
Language: English
Subfield: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,172
OpenAlex ID: W7171504985