Quality attributes of digital twins
Date
2021
Authors
Scheibmeir, Jim, author
Malaiya, Yashwant, advisor
Miller, Erika, committee member
Skiba, Hilla, committee member
Bradley, Thomas, committee member
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Abstract
Digital twins are virtual representations of their physical counterparts and offer modeling, monitoring, and prediction as common conveniences. Digital twins can enable autonomy in physical systems and transformation in operations, such as Industry 4.0. Digital twins may also be utilized to better secure cyber-physical systems. Currently, digital twins are found to be compelling, but the definitions of digital twin lack standardization and concerns related to the costs and quality of digital twins create reluctance of adoption. While the emerging technologies being utilized within digital twins increase capabilities, they also generate concerns towards cost and quality. For example, IoT is utilized to inform digital twins, yet many IoT devices have low power constraints and do not have robust security mechanisms. There are also concerns about the interoperability of IoT devices and the replacement and upgrade costs throughout the digital twin's life cycle. Augmented reality is an emerging technology and has been suggested as a user interface for digital twins. Augmented reality enables digital models and scenes to be annotated onto the physical landscape. Fusing physical and virtual worlds is common to both augmented reality and digital twin technologies. However, scaling and sharing immersive experiences is problematic. While research in areas such as IoT, augmented reality, and digital twins are frequent, there are still questions about evaluating the quality of these technologies, the composition and security of digital twins, and their maturity. The main goal of this research is to establish the quality characteristics that digital twin applications should exhibit. We also provide a framework for the construction of application programming interfaces for digital twins and a novel approach for testing augmented reality applications utilizing computer vision. Further outcomes of our research include a benchmarking scorecard for IoT cybersecurity communications and a maturity model for digital twins. Social media analytics are used to reveal the voice of stakeholders, further defining trends in the realm of digital twins. The social media analytics has shown a dearth of conversations regarding cybersecurity concerns. Organizations must protect their investments in digital twins and utilizing the frameworks, quality and maturity models, and scorecard within this research will reduce implementation risks.
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Rights Access
Subject
augmented reality
Internet of things
application testing
software quality
digital twins