A Framework for Digital Twin Collaboration

Digital Twins (DTs) have emerged as a powerful tool for modeling Large Complex Systems (LCSs). Their strength lies in the detailed virtual models that enable accurate predictions, presenting challenges in traditionally centralized approaches due to the immense scale and decentralized ownership of LCSs. This paper proposes a framework that leverages the prevalence of individual DTs within LCSs. By facilitating the exchange of decisions and predictions, this framework fosters collaboration among autonomous DTs, enhancing performance. Additionally, a trust-based mechanism is introduced to improve system robustness against poor decision-making within the collaborative network. The framework's effectiveness is demonstrated in a virtual power plant (VPP) scenario. The evaluation results confirm the system's objectives across various test cases and show scalability for large deployments.