What is a Digital Twin – A Mediation Approach

In the context of digitalization, which has been developing rapidly since the early 2010s, and the related development of the Internet of Things, which enables the production of virtually controlled and networked products of all kinds with integrated services, one term is gaining strongly in importance - the digital twin. It is increasingly becoming an integral part of the development and operation of technical systems. The principle vividness of the term "twin" is an essential part of its success, but at the same time it is also the core of a problem that cannot be ignored. Since no special prior knowledge is required to have a basic understanding or at least a vague idea of a digital twin, the term works excellently at the marketing level. However, when it comes to concrete technical use, it turns out that there is still no precise understanding of it. The definitions that can be found differ significantly in some cases. This is related to the fact that the large number of application areas have led to different requirements for the digital twin. For example, in some cases the digital twin of a real machine is supposed to replicate the state of the machine as accurately as possible, in other cases it is supposed to extend the machine with digital services. In order to be able to use the digital twin as a key technology in the long term, the parallel developments must now be gradually brought together again. One hurdle here is the lack of a uniform linguistic basis. This paper presents an approach to address this problem and to facilitate the exchange of concepts around the digital twin.