Exploring a Digital Shadow Design Workflow by Means of a Line Following Robot Use-Case

Abstract

Digital Twins (DTs) (including Digital Shadows) are simulation models running in parallel with a realworld system while being fed the same input stimuli as that system. They can be used to analyze, optimize and adapt complicated engineered systems. This paper proposes a generic workflow to construct a Digital Shadow of a simple line-following robot using a Formalism Transformation Graph + Process Model ( <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\text{FTG}+\text{PM}$</tex> ). Causal-Block Diagrams (CBD) were used to model both the physical dynamics and the control logic of the robot. The robot's logic is deployed using MicroPython, running on a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kit. This study is to be used as a exemplar for future research on Digital Twin architectures and workflows.