Simulation on Digital Twin: Role of Artificial Intelligence and Emergence of Industrial Metaverse

Digital Twins (DTs) are cutting-edge technological design principles of Industry 4.0. They elevate the representation level of physical systems backed up by accurate real-time data in virtual environments and empower the simulation capabilities of these systems through Artificial Intelligence (AI) for their analysis, monitoring, and optimization. This work comprehensively explores the intrinsic interaction between simulation and AI in DTs, meticulously covering the current literature status and categorizing these symbiotic interactions into three different groups that cover AI to support DT-based simulation, AI for optimization of simulation within DT, and simulation to support AI approaches in DT. In addition, a deeper look is taken at the role of simulation and AI in the emerging concept of the Industrial Metaverse, which promises to extend DTs beyond discrete virtual representation of physical systems to encompass the industrial ecosystem from end-to-end. Finally, the main research challenges for achieving the full integration of simulation and AI in DTs and at the Industrial Metaverse are discussed.