A Digital Twin-Driven and Conceptual Framework for Enabling Extended Reality Applications: A Case Study of a Brake Discs Manufacturer

With the recent advent of new concepts and technologies such as Internet of Things, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, a new data-driven paradigm, named Digital Twin, is emerging in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and is attracting the interest of academics and practitioners. Although the benefits offered by the Digital Twin in manufacturing are multiple, this concept has not yet reached its large-scale spread and a lot of effort is still needed, especially in terms of real-life applications. In this paper, a Digital Twin-based and conceptual framework for enabling extended reality applications is proposed and discussed. Its goodness is proven through the application to a real case study, with reference to a company that produces brake discs for automobiles. The proposed framework is able to determine the most convenient number of operators and Automated Guided Vehicles to be used in the production department. In the conclusions, the possible future developments of this research work are discussed, which mainly concern experiments through the use of the 5G network, which is able to guarantee an effective and efficient real-time alignment between the real environment and the digital twin.