Towards realization of Digital Twins for systems with coupled behavior

Abstract

Manufacturing has undergone a number of revolutions, and automation including robotics and digital transformation are the core of these revolutions. Digital Twin (DT) is one of the enabling technologies to achieve digitalized optimizations. Although DT is a promising technology, it poses several challenges for its theory-to-practice transition and settlement. To this end, this PhD thesis addresses some of these existing challenges in four major areas with the aim of advancing this field and providing methods and insights for its easier adoption by practitioners.To do so, this PhD thesis combines different research methods, including descriptive, exploratory, conceptual, and applied research. It explores current challenges and proposes methods that conceptualize those challenges; as a result, it brings solutions that address existing needs. To face such needs, applied research and case study research are used to ground the conceptualizations in close-to-real-life settings.This PhD thesis focuses on four major areas. In the first area, related to tooling and considerations for realizing DTs, a systematic survey on open-source frameworks is conducted and a systematic reporting framework for DT case studies is proposed. In the second area, related to integrating simulation as a fundamental aspect of DTs, an architectural approach that bridges existing frameworks and black-box simulation is proposed. In the third area, regarding the realization of DTs for complex heterogeneous systems, a modeling approach for composed systems and an architectural approach to implement hierarchical DTs with coupled behavior are proposed. In the fourth area, regarding the application of DTs for robotics, two approaches to combine robot-specific methods with DTs are proposed.The outcomes of this PhD project improve the ease of transfer to other case studies, especially in regards to the applicability in the robotics domain, while enhancing the reusability of existing assets/components and reducing the implementation effort. Moreover, this research can increase the adoption of DT technology, especially in Small and Medium Enterprises and individuals