Digital Twin, Virtual Reality and OPCUA-based architecture for pedagogical scenarios in Manufacturing and Computer Sciences curriculum

Whereas Digital Twin associated to Virtual Reality are powerful tools in industry, they are not commonly used in pedagogical scenarios since it implies using several standards and tools that are complex to understand, to setup, and so to massively deploy in a learning context. This problematic is explored in this paper by proposing an integrated technical solution based on pedagogical requirements from an engineering school, training both manufacturing and computer sciences engineers. First, several use cases based on the digital twin of a flexible manufacturing workshop and deployable in pedagogical scenarios are described. Based on the requirements of those use cases, a workflow and an OPCUA-based technical architecture is designed and described. The proposed methodology is three folds: (i) a generic workflow based on OPCUA which allows to deploy Digital Twin based on pedagogical requirement, (ii) a modular approach, based on open-source or academic free framework, that allows deployment scalability according to the available means in the school and (iii) use cases description that illustrate how each stakeholder is involved in the deployed modules and how they interact with it with immersive application. As such, it allows using those scenarios according to available components in the learning factory including automated production line, manual workstation, cobotic arms, AGV robot, through the simulation of the physical assets in the digital twin. In addition, the pedagogical deployment on remote campuses through multiple instances of the digital twin is explored. Finally, several pedagogical activities doable thanks to the architecture proposed are described.