Digital twins: Review and challenges

Abstract

With the arises of Industry 4.0, numerous concepts have emerged; one of the main concepts is the digital twin (DT). DT is being widely used nowadays, however, as there are several uses in the existing literature; the understanding of the concept and its functioning can be diffuse. The main goal of this paper is to provide a review of the existing literature to clarify the concept, operation, and main characteristics of DT, to introduce the most current operating, communication, and usage trends related to this technology, and to present the performance of the synergy between DT and multi-agent system (MAS) technologies through a computer science approach.