Web-Based Digital Twin
INTRODUCTION
The digital twin is gaining acceptance in a variety of industries . It is a cornerstone that enables the next step of extensive digitization . Satellites , airplanes , automobiles [ 1 ], production machines , energy systems , chemical processes [ 2 ], sports shoes [ 3 ] and humans themselves [ 4 ] receive a digital twin , opening new business models and use cases .
In many cases , the digital twin or parts of it are implemented using proprietary and specialized technologies . As a result , it is manufacturer-dependent and requires specialist knowledge to use . This hinders the interaction of different disciplines and makes it difficult to use the digital twin throughout the entire lifecycle . At the same time , open , standardized and widely used technologies also offer many opportunities for implementing a digital twin . Web technologies have been ubiquitous for a long time , connecting both people and technical systems . It is largely platform-independent , has many users , offers strong security and a high degree of maturity . Computers that have a web interface can use basic functions on the Internet immediately , usually without supplementary software . In addition , many technologies such as cloud computing , big data and Internet of Things are already available within the web technologies and are relevant for digital twins . We see this as the prerequisite for the digital twin to become established on a broad scale in practice .
In the following , we would like to present the solutions to some problems in current practice with the approach of a web-based digital twin . Thereby , we focus on industrial systems by choosing a computer-controlled laser plotter as demonstrator for a prototypical implementation . From this context , we set requirements for the concept and implementation and use them for validation . Fig . 1 shows the physical laser plotter , which is connected to its web-based digital twin bidirectionally .
Fig . 1 : Computer-controlled laser plotter as physical asset and the symbol of its web-based digital twin .
- 2 - March 2021