Virtual soccer champions: a case study on artifact reuse in soccer robot digital twin construction

Abstract

A Digital Twin (DT) can be described as a pairing of a physical and virtual entity, in which the latter 'mimicks' the former in some sense, using data from its physical counterpart---whether real-time or historical---, for various purposes including better understanding of the physical entity's behaviour, predictive maintenance, and whatif scenario exploration. Here, we focus on the development of the virtual part of the DT in a context where the physical entity already exists, offering the potential for design and engineering artifacts from the physical entity to be reused. We performed a case study on the Turtle soccer robots developed by Eindhoven University of Technology's Tech United [6] team, to explore the possibilities of reusing artifacts for the development of the corresponding virtual entity. In this paper, we present our experiences from this case study and discuss the benefits, drawbacks, and challenges we faced.