Implementing Digital Twin and Asset Administration Shell Models for a Simulated Sorting Production System

Digital twin (DT) is an emerging and promising enabling technology for realizing smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0. DT is featured by the high-fidelity digital replica and seamless integration of the physical world. As a systematic embodiment of DT, the concept of an asset administration shell (AAS) is a virtual digital representation of the physical asset in Industry 4.0. Both DT and AAS could be used to monitor, control, and optimize physical entities through the interactions between virtual and physical worlds. To date, much research effort has been devoted to DT and AAS applications. However, the mapping between the DT model and the AAS model was hardly considered. This paper first conducted a model mapping of DT and AAS. Based on this, this paper also proposed a DT-based Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) architecture and explored the feasibility of developing merged DT and AAS models for a virtual simulation system. Finally, a practical use case was developed to demonstrate the merged DT and AAS model as well as the physical-virtual data interaction.