Social Cyber-Physical Systems and Digital Twins Networks: A perspective about the future digital twin ecosystems

Abstract

The Digital Twin, being a new transversal technology, has spread very quickly in several fields (industry, transportation, building, healthcare, etc.) and often in an anarchic way. As a result, several attempts to standardize and propose generic models for the Digital Twin (DT) have been made, in order to counterbalance the large heterogeneity that characterized the development of this technology as a consequence of a certain hype around this theme. This paper presents work that is part of our endeavors to develop a generic deployment methodology for DT, focusing on its interactional and systemic aspects. The deployment methodology is based on the 5C decomposition of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), where the first level "Configuration" implies the setting up of a generic architecture, hence the DT typology presented in this paper. Based on this, we presented a new vision of the 5D model of the DT, and then highlighted the interaction and evolution mechanisms that can characterize this latter during its life cycle. Finally, we discussed the concept of a hierarchical network of interconnected and evolving DTs. This will pave the way to further research that will address more specific architectures and technology dependent, dealing with the last level of the 5C pyramid.