Distributed Digital Twins as Proxies-Unlocking Composability and Flexibility for Purpose-Oriented Digital Twins

In the realm of the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS), Digital Twins (DTs) have revolutionized the management of physical entities. However, existing implementations often face constraints due to hardware-centric approaches and limited flexibility. This article introduces a transformative paradigm that harnesses the potential of distributed digital twins as proxies, enabling software-centricity and unlocking composability and flexibility for purpose-oriented digital twin development and deployment. The proposed microservices-based architecture, rooted in service-oriented architecture (SOA) and microservices principles, emphasizes reusability, modularity, and scalability. Leveraging the Lean Digital Twin Methodology and packaged business capabilities expedites digital twin creation and deployment, facilitating dynamic responses to evolving industrial demands. This architecture segments the industrial realm into physical and virtual spaces, where core components are responsible for digital twin management, deployment, and secure interactions. By abstracting and virtualizing physical entities into individual digital twins, this approach lays the groundwork for purpose-oriented composite digital twin creation. Our key contributions involve a comprehensive exposition of the architecture, a practical proof-of-concept (PoC) implementation, and the application of the architecture in a use-case scenario. Additionally, we provide an analysis, including a quantitative evaluation of the proxy aspect and a qualitative comparison with traditional approaches. This assessment emphasizes key properties such as reusability, modularity, abstraction, discoverability, and security, transcending the limitations of contemporary industrial systems and enabling agile, adaptable digital proxies to meet modern industrial demands.