Digital Twins, Virtual Devices, and Augmentations for Self-Organising Cyber-Physical Collectives

Abstract

The engineering of large-scale cyber-physical systems (CPS) increasingly relies on principles from self-organisation and collective computing, enabling these systems to cooperate and adapt in dynamic environments. CPS engineering also often leverages digital twins that provide synchronised logical counterparts of physical entities. In contrast, sensor networks rely on the different but related concept of virtual device that provides an abstraction of a group of sensors. In this work, we study how such concepts can contribute to the engineering of self-organising CPSs. To that end, we analyse the concepts and devise modelling constructs, distinguishing between identity correspondence and execution relationships. Based on this analysis, we then contribute to the novel concept of “collective digital twin” (CDT) that captures the logical counterpart of a collection of physical devices. A CDT can also be “augmented” with purely virtual devices, which may be exploited to steer the self-organisation process of the CDT and its physical counterpart. We underpin the novel concept with experiments in the context of the pulverisation framework of aggregate computing, showing how augmented CDTs provide a holistic, modular, and cyber-physically integrated system view that can foster the engineering of self-organising CPSs.

Editorial: Understanding and engineering cyber-physical collectives

“…The approach of Khenifar et al promotes the integration of the “collective product” of CPCs with other systems, e.g., to influence agents (cf. Casadei et al, 2021 ). Aldini shows the path of formal languages to support the flexible modelling and verification of CPCs (cf.…”

“…Another key theme is the integration of artificial collective systems with humans, leading to notions like human-in-the-loop cyber-physical systems ( Annaswamy et al, 2023 ), social machines ( Hendler and Berners-Lee, 2010 ), and complex socio-cognitive systems ( Galesic et al, 2023 ). Last but not least, given CPCs are quite peculiar systems due to their complexity, they come with new challenges and opportunities regarding digital twins ( Casadei et al, 2021 ), security and privacy ( Aldini, 2018 ), and green computing ( Stolfi and Alba, 2018 ).…”

The Future of the Human–Machine Interface (HMI) in Society 5.0

“…• Proxy (virtual agent) meetings between digital twins: digital twins with the personality and characteristics of individual people can react as if they were the real people in response to approaches from others in cyberspace [56]; • Creating a personal/virtual agent to work on your behalf: you can extend the range of human activity from the real world to cyber space using digital twin computing [57];…”

Envisioning Digital Practices in the Metaverse: A Methodological Perspective

“…Digital twins have become a widely used concept in advanced manufacturing and networked contexts [4], allowing for remote monitoring and control with advanced AI techniques [4]. The ability of the digital twins to provide synchronised logical counterparts of physical entities has been leveraged to engineering self-organising cyber-physical systems (CPSs) [22]. This virtual representation of physical entities is incredibly valuable in the digital transformation of our society [6], aiding development in smart cities and modern healthcare.…”