Distributed Simulation for Digital Twins: an Application to Support the Autonomous Robotics for the Extended Ship

Abstract

A Digital Twin (DT) helps people enhance their visibility of the system’s current state and understand/predict its behavior under different conditions. The systems being twinned (e.g. defense, manufacturing, logistics, computer and network systems) are typically very complex and require significant effort to model and track. This paper discusses how Distributed Simulation (DS) can support DTs thanks to a network of distributed computing resources. DS can speed up the execution of simulation programs in DTs (and therefore the time taken to analyze the behavior of a system) and link together simulations to support composability and reusability during the development of DTs. A distributed real-time simulation environment based on the IEEE 1516 High Level Architecture Standard (HLA) has been developed in the case of the DT of an Underwater Unmanned Vehicles (UUV), intended to extend the ship capabilities. In this study, major Italian stakeholders, working in the maritime domain, are developing a number of tools and enabling technologies needed for the practical implementation of an extended ship with a fleet of underwater and surface drones and found in the HLA-based DS a perfect solution for a simulation-based DT.