Towards interoperable digital twins: Integrating SysML into AAS with higher-order transformations

The functional suitability of digital twin systems relies on accurately capturing, modelling, and exchanging data from their corresponding assets or processes. Consequently, achieving interoperability among various components and different digital twin systems is crucial. In the current landscape, characterized by various languages supporting diverse semantic models, achieving interoperability is a complex task. Achieving interoperability might involve translating diverse models, either peer-to-peer or through a central pivotal model. In this study, we propose a model-driven engineering approach that leverages higher-order transformations in conjunction with the Asset Administration Shell, acting as the pivotal model to tackle the interoperability challenges associated with digital twin systems. Higher-order transformations are a specific type of model transformation, characterized by their input and/or output being model transformations themselves. Our hypothesis is that such transformations would eliminate the need to manually craft multiple translations toward the Asset Administration Shell. In-stead, a single higher-order transformation would automatically generate these translations. We chose the Asset Administration Shell as our pivotal model, because it is widely recognized as a foundational element for application interoperability in Industry 4.0/5.0. We illustrate our approach through a vehicle use case represented using the Systems Modeling Language version 2 and consolidating this description into an Asset Administration Shell model. Hence, we showcase the applicability and suitability of our proposed approach. To the best of our knowledge, our work represents the first effort to address the translation of Systems Modeling Language version 2 into the Asset Administration Shell.