Online Interactive Simulation with Digital Twins for Collaborative Manufacturing

The emerging information technologies are leading the new generation of industrial revolution. The manufacturing industry is benefited by the combination of cybernetic and physical systems. To facilitate decision-making, digital twins can reflect production realities to human/intelligent agents. But, it is not sufficient to support manufacturing in highly complex manufacturing environments. For this purpose, we proposed a new digital twin based manufacturing paradigm and an online interactive simulation framework, which can provide both diagnostic and prognostic support. Moreover, we introduced an implementation approach and realized a prototype system. By comparing with existing smart manufacturing systems, our design can better support production decision-making. Thus, this work takes the first step to achieve smarter manufacturing.