WLDT: A general purpose library to build IoT digital twins

Abstract Digital twins are virtual software copies of physical objects and systems, and represent a strategic technology enabler to support Internet of Things devices and systems. Existing software frameworks for digital twins mainly operate in the cloud and are based on platform-specific solutions, harming interoperability and adaptability. However, it is getting recognized that Internet of Things and digital twins architectures can take advantage of microservices and platform-independent distributed architectures (also on the edge), promoting higher scalability, adaptability, and interoperability. In this context, we introduce WLDT (White Label Digital Twins), a general-purpose library that allows developers to create digital twins in terms of modular, adaptable, and inter-operable software agents. Among different features, WLDT library supports multiple standard protocols, caching, software processing pipeline and metrics monitoring.

[1]  Noël Crespi,et al.  Digital Twin in the IoT Context: A Survey on Technical Features, Scenarios, and Architectural Models , 2020, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[2]  Zach Shelby,et al.  Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link Format , 2012, RFC.

[3]  Christian Groves,et al.  Reusable Interface Definitions for Constrained RESTful Environments , 2019 .

[4]  Zdenek Becvar,et al.  Mobile Edge Computing: A Survey on Architecture and Computation Offloading , 2017, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[5]  Fei Tao,et al.  Digital twin-driven product design, manufacturing and service with big data , 2017, The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology.

[6]  Pooyan Jamshidi,et al.  Microservices Architecture Enables DevOps: Migration to a Cloud-Native Architecture , 2016, IEEE Software.

[7]  Amit Samanta,et al.  Dyme: Dynamic Microservice Scheduling in Edge Computing Enabled IoT , 2020, IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

[8]  Carsten Bormann,et al.  Sensor Measurement Lists (SenML) , 2018, RFC.

[9]  Luca Veltri,et al.  A Sidecar Object for the Optimized Communication Between Edge and Cloud in Internet of Things Applications , 2019, Future Internet.

[10]  Fei Tao,et al.  Make more digital twins , 2019, Nature.

[11]  Edward H. Glaessgen,et al.  The Digital Twin Paradigm for Future NASA and U.S. Air Force Vehicles , 2012 .

[12]  Carsten Bormann,et al.  The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) , 2014, RFC.

[13]  Reiner Anderl,et al.  Digital twin – Proof of concept , 2018 .

[14]  Michael W. Grieves,et al.  Product Lifecycle Management: Driving the Next Generation of Lean Thinking , 2005 .

[15]  Mikael Hedlind,et al.  Digital Twin of a Cutting Tool , 2018 .