On the alleviation of imminent technical and business challenges of long-lasting functional digital twins

Zeb, Akhtar; Kortelainen, Juha; Rantala, Tero; Saunila, Minna; Ukko, Juhani

doi:10.1016/j.compind.2022.103701

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…In system-critical applications of DTs, all the aspects of preserving information and minimizing any additional work should be taken into account. Zeb et al (2022) discuss the risks involved in DTs both from the technical and business point of views.…”

Section: Life Cycle Risks Of Dtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital twin—The dream and the reality

Kortelainen

Minav

Tammi

2023

Front. Internet Things

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Digital twins (DTs) are under active research and development in the research community, industry, and in the digital engineering solution business. The roots of the concept of DT are almost 2 decades old, but the fast progress in enabling technologies, especially in data analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, has accelerated the evolution of DT during the last 5 years. The growing interest, increasing development activities, and increasing business opportunities of the concept are also feeding the hype in the media. Consequently, this has led to the scattering and even misuse of the concept and its definition. In this article, we discuss different applications of DTs and what kinds of solutions there are for DTs. We analyze some most cited definitions of DT in the scientific literature and discuss the interpretation of the definitions through a hypothetical case example. Furthermore, we discuss different life cycle aspects of DTs and potential risks that may arise. To further concretize the concept of DT, we introduce ten reported case examples of implemented DTs in the scientific literature and analyze their features. Finally, we discuss the future development directions of DTs and the aspects that will affect the development trends.

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Section: Life Cycle Risks Of Dtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital twin—The dream and the reality

Kortelainen

Minav

Tammi

2023

Front. Internet Things

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“…Changes on the DT will be considered during the processing of the physical object [3]. Zeb et al [4] describe a functional digital twin that actually represents a simulation, which is initialised from the most recent state of the environment tracked in the DT. It is deployed to explore system behaviours and evaluate the effects of measures and to predict and control the connected risks.…”

Section: Introduction 1motivation and Problem Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Evaluation of AGV Dispatching Methods in an Agent-Based Simulation Environment and a Digital Twin

2023

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A critical part of Automated Material Handling Systems (AMHS) is the task allocation and dispatching strategy employed. In order to better understand and investigate this component, we here present an extensive experimental evaluation of three different approaches with randomly generated, as well as custom designed, environment configurations. While previous studies typically focused on use cases based on highly constrained navigation capabilities (e.g., overhead hoist transport systems), our evaluation is built around highly mobile, free-ranging vehicles, i.e., Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) that are gaining popularity in a broad range of applications. Consequently, our experiments are conducted using a microscopic agent-based simulation, instead of the more common discrete-event simulation model. Dispatching methods often are built around the assumption of the asynchronous evaluation of an event-based model, i.e., vehicles trigger a cascade of individual dispatching decisions, e.g., when reaching intersections. We find that this does not translate very well to a fleet of highly mobile systems that can change direction at any time. With this in mind, we present formulations of well known dispatching approaches that are better suited for a synchronous evaluation of the dispatching decisions. The formulations are based on the Stable Marriage Problem (SMP) and the Linear Sum Assignment Problem (LSAP). We use matching and assignment algorithms to compute the actual dispatching decisions. The selected algorithms are evaluated in a multi-agent simulation environment. To integrate a centralised fleet management, a digital twin concept is proposed and implemented. By this approach, the fleet management is independent of the implementation of the specific agents, allowing to quickly adapt to other simulation-based or real application scenarios. For the experimental evaluation, two new performance measures related to the efficiency of a material handling system are proposed, Travel Efficiency and Throughput Effort. The experimental evaluation indicates that reassignment mechanisms in the dispatching method can help to increase the overall efficiency of the fleet. We did not find significant differences in absolute performance in terms of throughput rate. Additionally, the difference in performance between SMP- and LSAP-based dispatching with reassignment seems negligible. We conclude with a discussion, where we consider potential confounding factors and relate the findings to previously reported results found in the literature.

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