Digital twins in sport: Concepts, Taxonomies, Challenges and Practical Potentials

TL;DR

This paper reviews the application of digital twins in sports, discussing concepts, taxonomies, real-world examples, and future challenges, highlighting their impact on training, competition management, and strategic decision-making.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of digital twins in sports, including taxonomies, real examples, and analysis of their influence and future potential in the domain.

Findings

Digital twins are transforming sports training and athlete management.

Taxonomies help categorize different types of digital twins in sports.

Digital twins face challenges but offer significant opportunities for future sports innovations.

Abstract

Digital twins belong to ten of the strategic technology trends according to the Gartner list from 2019, and have encountered a big expansion, especially with the introduction of Industry 4.0. Sport, on the other hand, has become a constant companion of the modern human suffering a lack of a healthy way of life. The application of digital twins in sport has brought dramatic changes not only in the domain of sport training, but also in managing athletes during competitions, searching for strategical solutions before and tactical solutions during the games by coaches. In this paper, the domain of digital twins in sport is reviewed based on papers which have emerged in this area. At first, the concept of a digital twin is discussed in general. Then, taxonomies of digital twins are appointed. According to these taxonomies, the collection of relevant papers is analyzed, and some real examples of digital twins are exposed. The review finishes with a discussion about how the digital twins affect changes in the modern sport disciplines, and what challenges and opportunities await the digital twins in the future.