Hierarchical System of Digital Twins: A Holistic Architecture for Swarm System Analysis

Mouhamadou F. Ball, Jannik Laval, Loïc Lagadec

2025

Abstract

Swarm systems are being increasingly adopted for their operational capabilities and are now assigned more sensitive missions, often in unpredictable environments. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate their performance in the face of natural or human-induced uncertainties before deployment and enhance their resilience during missions. To enable a comprehensive analysis of this system, a multi-level analysis must be conducted to capture the dynamics at the component, cluster, and swarm levels. Digital Twin (DT) offers a promising solution to address this challenge. While there are existing approaches that use digital twins to analyze complex systems, they do not take into account the specific requirements introduced by swarm configuration. This paper presents a holistic reference architecture, the Hierarchical System of Digital Twins (HSDT), which lays the groundwork for creating digital twins of swarm systems. To support this framework, we introduce the concepts of functional and aggregation hierarchies and propose a goal-oriented method for instantiating DT with a specific level of sophistication. Additionally, we present a metamodel that integrates elements of the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) data model to ensure interoperability with external standards. A prototype of HSDT was developed, and a case study was presented, focusing on analyzing spatial parameters within a swarm of Unmanned Vehicles (UVs).

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Ball M., Laval J. and Lagadec L. (2025). Hierarchical System of Digital Twins: A Holistic Architecture for Swarm System Analysis. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Model-Based Software and Systems Engineering - Volume 1: MODELSWARD; ISBN 978-989-758-729-0, SciTePress, pages 280-287. DOI: 10.5220/0013258900003896

in Bibtex Style

@conference{modelsward25,
author={Mouhamadou Ball and Jannik Laval and Loïc Lagadec},
title={Hierarchical System of Digital Twins: A Holistic Architecture for Swarm System Analysis},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Model-Based Software and Systems Engineering - Volume 1: MODELSWARD},
year={2025},
pages={280-287},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013258900003896},
isbn={978-989-758-729-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Model-Based Software and Systems Engineering - Volume 1: MODELSWARD
TI - Hierarchical System of Digital Twins: A Holistic Architecture for Swarm System Analysis
SN - 978-989-758-729-0
AU - Ball M.
AU - Laval J.
AU - Lagadec L.
PY - 2025
SP - 280
EP - 287
DO - 10.5220/0013258900003896
PB - SciTePress