Conceptual design of a digital twin based on semantic web technologies in the smart home context

Abstract

Like the current digitalization process [1], digitalization in the Smart Home and Smart Building goes beyond seeing digital systems as individual elements or isolated solutions. In principle, solutions must be developed that enable comprehensive networking and barrier-free data exchange to support the numerous new application scenarios [2]. Nowadays, in a typical smart home, there exist a large number of miscellaneous devices and systems with different characteristics. Using their sensors and actuators, these devices and systems can form an interface to the real world and can make their measurements available in near real time. Furthermore, it is possible to provide a digital representation of an entire Smart Home or Building using a socalled Digital Twin. Digital Twins can not only represent the current state of the underlying systems, but also the history of the data for learning processes in a semantic context. Hence, they can provide interfaces to AI systems in a service environment. In this paper, we present an approach which uses the WoT Thing Description (TD) as standardized by the W3C [3] as the basis for the implementation of a novel Digital Twin for Smart Homes and Buildings. The use of the standardized TD model enables interoperability across manufacturers and devices. The goal is to make extended services more flexible and dynamic on the basis of semantic device type and building descriptions of Digital Twins.