Towards Federated Digital Twin Platforms (2505.04324v1)

Abstract: Digital Twin (DT) technology has become rather popular in recent years, promising to optimize production processes, manage the operation of cyber-physical systems, with an impact spanning across multiple application domains (e.g., manufacturing, robotics, space etc.). DTs can include different kinds of assets, e.g., models, data, which could potentially be reused across DT projects by multiple users, directly affecting development costs, as well as enabling collaboration and further development of these assets. To provide user support for these purposes, dedicated DT frameworks and platforms are required, that take into account user needs, providing the infrastructure and building blocks for DT development and management. In this demo paper, we show how the DT as a Service (DTaaS) platform has been extended to enable a federated approach to DT development and management, that allows multiple users across multiple instances of DTaaS to discover, reuse, reconfigure, and modify existing DT assets.

Federated Digital Twin Platforms: An Extension of DTaaS

The paper "Towards Federated Digital Twin Platforms" mainly focuses on enhancing the Digital Twin as a Service (DTaaS) platform to accommodate federated development and management of Digital Twins (DTs). Authored by Mirgita Frasheri, Prasad Talasila, and Vanessa Scherma, the research presents a crucial extension to DTaaS that fosters collaborative development and asset management across multiple platform instances, introducing a more interconnected approach to DT management.

Digital Twin technology, essentially a digital replica of physical or cyber-physical systems, has emerged as an influential tool for optimizing production processes and delivering real-time services. These services encompass monitoring, fault detection, diagnosis, and even operational reconfiguration. Across domains such as manufacturing, robotics, and aerospace, the operation of DTs profoundly impacts the corresponding physical twins (PTs), thus making them DT-enabled systems that enhance rather than substitute the PT functionality.

The paper highlights the necessity of moving beyond ad-hoc development methodologies for DTs, which have predominated in prior research. It emphasizes the importance of platforms and frameworks that can oversee the lifecycle and management of multiple DTs through configurable services. DTaaS, by embracing this paradigm shift, allows users to create, execute, and reconfigure DTs by leveraging shared assets and collaboration across projects. However, the conventional approach lacked adequate support for dynamic reconfiguration and execution of DTs.

The authors propose significant enhancements to DTaaS, integrating it with the Gitlab DevOps framework. This amalgamation aims to facilitate configurable and scalable execution of DTs in diverse computing environments. This integration allows DT assets—spanning models, data, tools, and services—to be shared, discovered, reused, and modified across different instances of DTaaS platforms, enabling a federated architecture for DT management.

This federated approach is described meticulously through a structured process entailing various lifecycle phases for DTs: creation, execution, reconfiguration, and termination. The architecture supports development, sharing, and modification of DT assets via a systematic workflow, primarily through git-based collaboration. By connecting multiple DTaaS instances, users can collaborate on common assets, thereby realizing efficient and flexible DT operations.

The paper also delineates the core functionality of the federated DTaaS platform extension, emphasizing its collaborative potential. By leveraging GitLab APIs, users can perform asset discovery and implement changes seamlessly. The DTaaS platform promotes a layered architecture that supports a variety of execution environments such as Docker, virtual machines, and Kubernetes, alongside visualization services for performance insights.

Looking ahead, the extension introduces numerous implications for the development and management of DTs. The federated structure affords enhanced flexibility and reusability, offering significant reductions in development costs and facilitating integration across diverse application domains. The significant barricades addressed in this research, such as support for lifecycle management and asset-level collaboration, pave the way for elevated utility and adoption of DTs in complex systems. Moreover, leveraging DevOps principles within DTaaS holds prospects for continuous verification, validation, and dynamic adaptation of DTs.

Conclusively, this research steers the conversation towards more sophisticated frameworks for DT management, with potential future developments alluded to by the authors themselves. These entail the creation of rich case studies to test the federated approach outlined. This paper, thereby, contributes notably to refining how DTs are perceived and developed, and how platforms like DTaaS can be innovatively employed to amplify the capabilities and application scope of Digital Twins across industry landscapes.