Self-improving Models for the Intelligent Digital Twin: Towards Closing the Reality-to-Simulation Gap

摘要

This paper presents a novel approach to ensure the quality of the Digital Twin models that modern Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Systems (CPMS) rely on. CPMS are configurable and intelligent. Environmental and system parameters change frequently. Thus, static models are inadequate. Autonomous mobile robots and the simulation of their movement are important elements of these CPMS. Based on our reinforcement learning-based methodology, we use these robots as an example to show how the Digital Twin automatically improves models that do not perfectly represent the physical asset, making it an intelligent Digital Twin. In our scenario, the behavior of the asset deviates from the simulated prediction, i.e., a simulation gap occurs. The presented approach closes this simulation gap through a three-step mechanism. First, it makes the simulated data and the real data comparable and synchronizes it. Second, it applies reinforcement learning to find patterns in the deviations between the simulated and real data. Third, it learns to compensate for them. The evaluation of this example shows promising results.