Empowering The Eclipse Arrowhead Framework with a Digital Twin as a Proxy Service

Eclipse Arrowhead is an open-source framework for industrial automation based on service-oriented principles. It allows the creation of a highly flexible System of Systems (SoS) by defining local clouds for connecting application systems running on industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPSs). However, in an ICPS context, resource constraints and battery-powered devices are facing issues such as high energy consumption, poor service availability, and low-security capabilities. The concept of Digital Twins (DTs) as a proxy (DTaaP) has been defined to address these CPS challenges by providing valuable properties such as energy efficiency, availability, and security. In this paper, we propose a solution to empower the Eclipse Arrowhead Framework (EAF) with DTaaP. Specifically, the proposed solution introduces AHDitto, an Arrowhead-compliant supporting core system, enabling EAF to achieve three DTaaP properties by integrating Eclipse Ditto with EAF.