Guest Editorial: Engineering and Operating Digital Twins for Automated Production or Construction Systems

With the emergence of Industry 4.0/5.0, the notion of digital twins has been promoted for improving the engineering and operation phases of automated production and construction systems. Standardization efforts such as the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) aim to provide dedicated formats, protocols, and technologies for engineering and operating digital twins. Such efforts cover model representations of the design as well as runtime data for reflecting the operation of systems. However, many open questions remain regarding the efficient and effective engineering and operation of digital twins. Currently, the realization of digital twins is associated with cost-intensive processes, repetitive work, and proprietary technologies. To improve the current situation, dedicated concepts, techniques, and methods for engineering and operating digital twins are needed. Moreover, dedicated support to manage the different life-cycle phases of digital twins in alignment with the life-cycle phases of the actual systems is required to realize the true benefits of digital twins. This Special Issue on Engineering and Operating Digital Twins for Automated Production or Construction Systems of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering is focused on emerging approaches for enabling digital twin-based automation. As the final outcome of a thorough peer-review process, three papers were selected for this Special Issue. We hope that these papers will stimulate future research on engineering and operating digital twins.