Sociality-as-a-Service: A new platform for networked Digital Twins

Abstract

Grieves and Vickers in 2017 formally defined a Digital Twin (DT) as consisting of three primary elements: a physical object in the physical space, a virtual object in the virtual space, and the data link between the two spaces. Recently, significant attention has been paid to the use of DTs in a large variety of application domains which would benefit of the use of several DTs that share knowledge and experiences gained though their Artificial Intelligence-empowered logic. The need for DT collaboration has stimulated some initial studies on DT networks. However, complete solutions supporting collaboration between DTs are still missing. Taking inspiration by previous researches which propose to exploit social relationships among devices in the IoT, in this paper we introduce a micro service-based platform supporting the set up and management of relationships among DTs which are plugged in the platform for interacting in a social environment. By exploiting such relationships, it is possible for DT to interact and cooperate with each others in a trusty environment.