A didactic Digital Twin for engineering education: design and application

Digital Twin (DT) has emerged as a key technology for industrial applications in the transition to Industry 4.0, enabling tighter integration between the physical and digital domains, supporting applications such as real-time monitoring and system optimisation. As Digital Twins continue to advance in research and industrial applications, there is a growing need to support education and professional training in this domain. However, the design and implementation of didactic Digital Twins tailored to educational environments remain insufficiently developed. Open and replicable DT platforms for educational contexts are particularly scarce in the literature. This paper presents the implementation of a didactic Digital Twin that comprises both its physical structure and a digital platform. The solution integrates a physical pick-and-place demonstrator with a software platform that enables real-time, bidirectional data synchronisation. The DT was implemented and experimentally tested in an undergraduate-level course. The models of the physical system and the software platform are made openly available to enable replication and further development by interested educators and researchers. The results include the didactic DT proposal, the digital platform, and an analysis of its educational application. By providing an extensible architecture, the study contributes to advancing open and replicable Digital Twin infrastructures for educational environments.