Digital Twin of an Automatic Machine Using Unity and Prespective Software

Digital Twin is the modern way of prototyping. It is a new layer on top of an existing model, extending the possibilities. This thesis work was carried out and developed at the research laboratory “LIAM LAB”. The main focus was to study the efficacy in developing a Digital Twin of an automatic machine in detail. It is a packaging machine (Technocoil 2200) from “SICA” using PRESPECTIVE, a Digital Twining software based on a game engine UNITY3D. Digital Twin tools and solutions are offered by many major companies, but these have the potential disadvantage of vendor lock-in. Although these brands claim to be open, their tools do not operate very well with third-party software. This makes many users to opt for openness which will help in integrating many features as per their requirement. Another main factor is providing high resolution simulations with an ability to solve complex physical problems which could be handled by Unity. The process of modelling a Digital Twin is studied extensively in this thesis work. But, in particular the tube guide part of the machine was considered, and its Digital Twin was modelled using Prespective and subsequently the interfacing of the model in Prespective with a PLC was implemented. Finally, the interfacing is validated by forcing values from controller and visualizing the outputs in Unity.