A Study on the Design and Performance Evaluation of a Modular Lightweight Digital Twin Architecture for Real-Time Distributed Manufacturing Process Control
Digital twins are a core technology for smart factories, but the high cost and complexity of existing industrial protocols like OPC-UA act as significant barriers to entry for resource-constrained small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study proposes a ‘modular lightweight architecture for discrete manufacturing process control’ to address these issues. It eliminates dependency on specific middleware, utilizing only the universal game engine Unity and standard TCP/IP socket communication. The proposed architecture functionally separates visualization (Unity server) and control logic (external client), enhancing system flexibility and minimizing communication overhead. To demonstrate the architecture's excellence, a virtual conveyor belt control experiment was conducted in a distributed LAN environment simulating an actual manufacturing site. The results confirmed stable response performance with an average round-trip time (RTT) of 25.5ms, proving it meets soft real-time control requirements. Notably, comparative analysis with an ideal localhost environment (average RTT of 15.8ms) quantitatively isolated the pure network overhead to approximately 9.7ms, objectively demonstrating the structural efficiency of the proposed architecture compared to middleware-based systems. This research presents a concrete methodology and engineering benchmark data enabling the construction of practical digital twins without expensive solutions.
목차
Abstract 1. INTRODUCTION 2. RELATED WORK & THERORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 Comparative Analysis of Industrial Digital Twin Communication Protocols 2.2 Research Trends in Game Engine-Based Digital Twins 3. MIDDLEWARE-FREE LIGHTWEIGHT ARCHITECTURE DESIGN 3.1 Core Design Principles: Modularity and Functional Separation 3.2 Detailed Design and Implementation by Component 3.3 Data Communication Protocol Definition 4. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION & TCP LATENCY ANALYSIS 4.1 Experimental Objectives and Quantitative Evaluation Metrics 4.2 Experimental Environment and Scenario 4.3 Theoretical Analysis of TCP Latency 5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 5.1 Theoretical Analysis of TCP Latency 5.2 Jitter Plot Analysis and Communication Stability Verification 6. CONCLUSION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT REFERENCES
키워드
Digital Twinlightweight architecturereal-time controldiscrete manufacturing processesUnityTCP/IPperformance evaluation
저자
Heejeoung Moon [ Prof., Dept. of Computer Engineering, Honam Univ., Korea ]
Corresponding Author
국제문화기술진흥원 [The International Promotion Agency of Culture Technology]
설립연도
2009
분야
공학>공학일반
소개
본 진흥원은 문화기술(Culture Technology) 관련 산·학·연·관으로 구성된 비영리 단체이다. 문화기술(CT)은 정보통신기술(ICT), 문화적 사고 기반의 예술, 인문학, 디자인, 사회과학기술이 접목된 신융합기술(New Convergence Technology, NCT)로 정의한다. 인간의 삶의 질을 향상시키고, 진보된 방향으로 변화시키고, 문화기술 관련 분야의 학술 및 기술의 발전과 진흥에 공헌하기 위하여, 제3조의 필요한 사업을 행함을 그 목적으로 한다.
간행물
간행물명
International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology(IJACT)
간기
계간
pISSN
2288-7202
eISSN
2288-7318
수록기간
2013~2025
등재여부
KCI 등재
십진분류
KDC 600DDC 700
이 권호 내 다른 논문 / International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology(IJACT) Volume 13 Number 4