File- and API-based interoperability of digital twins by model transformation: An IIoT case study using asset administration shell

By providing a consolidated access point to information of devices and systems, digital twins enable new, data-intensive use cases for the industrial internet of things (IIoT) like predictive plant and product design. A digital twin is a digital representation of an entity, which is sufficient to meet the requirements of a set of use cases. However, the lack of interoperability between the digital twins of different companies hinders use cases that require information exchange between different organizations. Achieving interoperability among digital twins requires transforming the included information to other formats. In this paper, we present requirements as well as a solution to enable interoperable digital twins by flexibly transforming their information models. The solution enables file- and API-based information exchange of comprehensive information models in a bidirectional way. We illustrate how we applied our solution to a real-world application example in an industrial context by transforming ABB Ability™ digital twins to the asset administration shell format. We show that our customizable transformation system paves the way for on-demand interoperability and thereby enables advanced use cases in the IIoT. This includes smart use cases that connect industries as well as artificial intelligence in industry.