With the rise of digital twin technology, the application of digital twin technology to industrial automation provides a new direction for the digital transformation of the global smart manufacturing industry. In order to further improve production efficiency, as well as realize enterprise digital empowerment, this paper takes a welding robot arm as the research object and constructs a welding robot arm digital twin system. Using three-dimensional modeling technology and model rendering, the welding robot arm digital twin simulation environment was built. Parent–child hierarchy and particle effects were used to truly restore the movement characteristics of the robot arm and the welding effect, with the help of TCP communication and Bluetooth communication to realize data transmission between the virtual segment and the physical end. A variety of UI components were used to design the human–machine interaction interface of the digital twin system, ultimately realizing the data-driven digital twin system. Finally, according to the digital twin maturity model constructed by Prof. Tao Fei’s team, the system was scored using five dimensions and 19 evaluation factors. After testing the system, we found that the combination of digital twin technology and automation is feasible and achieves the expected results.

Digital twin technology has become a key support for smart manufacturing and smart city construction by constructing virtual mapping models of physical entities to achieve data-driven real-time interaction and optimization. This paper systematically describes the core concept of digital twin and its basic principles, while supplementing it with the application of digital twin technology in various industries in China to enable readers to better understand digital twin technology. In the analysis of the development history at home and abroad, this paper combs through the evolution path of digital twin from proof of concept to cross-domain application: foreign countries have experienced the early exploration of aerospace and military fields, the deep integration of industrial software, and eventually expanded to medical and transportation and other areas of people's livelihoods; domestically, through the policy-driven and technological integration, digital twins have been used in urban planning (e.g., Xiong ‘an New Area BIM area-wide modelling), industrial manufacturing (virtual optimization of workshop layout), and public safety (Beijing gas pipeline network). The article further analyzes the three key technologies of digital twin - high-precision modelling, multi-physical field simulation and Internet of Things (IOT) data fusion, and the study reveals that with the strategic deployment of the national ‘14th Five-Year Plan’ for the construction of digital twin cities, the technology will be used in the transformation of industry 4.0 and the construction of a smart society. The study reveals that with the strategic deployment of digital twin city construction in the national ‘14th Five-Year Plan’, the technology will unleash greater potential in the transformation of industry 4.0 and the construction of smart society, and promote the digital reconstruction and sustainable development of the whole industrial chain.