Digital Twin Project at The Corner

What Is This Project?

DELTA partnered with Dr. Nathan Williams and local firms See Insights, LLC and VaridX to create a digital twin of The Corner at Centennial Campus. Funded through a DELTA Grant for Dr. Williams' PRT 250 course, the project integrates innovative local technology into student learning.

What's a Digital Twin? A digital twin is a digital representation of a real life space that uses data from the physical space in the digital model, allowing for everything from monitoring and management to doing full simulations of different scenarios, future planning, and other facility management applications. This digital twin is being used in the course itself but is also publicly available so that others can use it in their own courses or to just get a glimpse into some of the innovation happening at NC State.

A Matterport camera on a tripod being programmed to take a scan point at The Corner.

Scanning The Corner

Using a Matterport camera and an enterprise drone a 3D scan of The Corner was created as the basis of the digital twin.

Screenshot of the digital twin

In addition to the scanned 3D model of The Corner a simplified, hand-modeled version was also created, giving viewers a chance to compare scan data to a more traditional digital 3D model.

Enterprise drone with scanning equipment awaiting takeoff near The Corner.

Closeup of a drone pilot focused on the controls while conducting a terrestrial scan of The Corner.

Power monitoring sensors being installed into the breaker box at The Corner.

About The Digital Twin

Project Purpose

The primary purpose of this project is to provide a working example of a digital twin for Dr. Williams’ PRT 250 - Facilities Management in Parks, Recreation, Tourism and Event Management course. Students will use this digital twin early in the semester as an introduction to what digital twins are and to encourage them to think about how a tool like this could be applied by park and facility managers in the field.

Since it is a public-facing project we also hope that, as a secondary purpose, this will be an exciting and engaging way for patrons of The Corner to learn about the kind of research and innovation that happens at NC State.

Lastly, a tertiary goal would be that this site becomes a way for various University groups to collaborate and see how digital twins and live sensor data can be used to augment their own projects, facilities, and efforts.

The project was installed in August of 2026 and is a temporary installation scheduled through December of 2027.

View the live digital twin.

Learn more about the DELTA Grants Programs.

What are These Sensors For?

For this digital twin the project team wanted to collect and display a variety of information that would be useful in facility management while also taking into consideration the activity and features of The Corner. To that end you will notice several sensors around the area:

Usage/occupancy traffic data for different areas of The Corner (data is anonymized so individuals are not identifiable)
Weather data
Soil moisture data for the hops garden
Power usage monitoring

The information gathered by these sensors can be viewed in real time in the digital twin itself.

Student Outcomes

Through this project students of PRT 250 are able to experience a working digital twin of an easily accessible public space and have crucial discussions about how this technology can benefit and change the planning and management of recreational facilities. Students completing the class will:

Create 3D models of physical facilities using terrestrial photogrammetry scanning, followed by direct model manipulation in a 3D rendering platform
Monitor live and continuous real-world data on facilities usage by accessing IoT (Internet of Things) sensors at recreation facility sites
Describe at least three major facility systems (i.e., electrical, HVAC, pedestrian traffic flow, plumbing, etc.) and how they are managed while navigating a digital twin of a facility

The Project Team

This is a collaborative effort that involves several on-campus groups and some external partners. The general breakdown of the parties involved and their roles is as follows:

Dr. Nathan Williams, Parks, Recreation & Tourism Management

Principal investigator for the project, subject matter expert, and instructor of PRT 250.

NC State DELTA

Worked alongside Dr. Williams to guide and develop the project. The project team brought skills and expertise in instructional design, video production, 3D modeling, web application development and web technologies, electronics and hardware, graphic design, and UI/UX design. These all came together to create the digital twin, an assignment guide to go along with it (in collaboration with the NC State Libraries), a video interview series with industry professionals, and housings and installation of the sensor hardware in the physical space.

Jude DesNoyer, University Real Estate & Development

Oversees The Corner, consulting and assisting with logistics and coordination for the onsite project work.

See Insights, LLC and VaridX

External partners for this project that work together to provide sensor hardware and monitoring and management software (respectively).

View the live digital twin.

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