A Six-Layer Architecture for Digital Twins with Aggregation

Digital twins, the cyberspace counterparts of physical systems, play an important role in cyber-physical production systems (CPPS), within the context of Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things (IoT). In complex manufacturing systems with many digital twins, information must be aggregated, which leads to the requirement for digital twins to interact. Reference architectures for digital twins are required when digital twins from different vendors have to interact. This paper extends the Six-Layer Architecture for Digital Twins (SLADT) to a reference architecture with aggregation (SLADTA). The architecture makes maximum use of vendor-neutral off-the-shelf software, as well as secure and open protocols for twin-to-twin communication. SLADTA is illustrated through an application in a manufacturing cell scenario.