Distributed digital twins on the open-source OpenTwins framework

Abstract

This article addresses some challenges associated with combining Digital Twins and Distributed systems technologies and introduces a re-definition of the architecture of OpenTwins, an open-source platform designed to develop generic next-gen 3D-IoT-AI-powered digital twins. This approach enables the distribution of digital twins across different infrastructures by seamlessly integrating multiple instances of OpenTwins working together. Distributing Digital Twins across networks and devices offers dynamic and collaborative simulations, artificial intelligence techniques, yet poses synchronization and scalability challenges. The platform re-definition involves the definition of a lightweight, synchronized, and distributed version of the original OpenTwins architecture to tackle these issues. As the field of digital twins is closely linked to the Internet of Things(IoT) environment this architecture has been designed to be compatible in IoT devices, being compatible with ARM architectures, consuming fewer resources than the original platform as it has fewer components, thus reducing the number of messages and the bandwidth consumed.