AWS introduces AWS IoT TwinMaker. The solution allows developers to build ‘digital twin’ environments that serve to monitor existing systems and optimize operations without burdening real-world environments.
Digital twin environments are a hot topic these days, and the public cloud giant wants to get a piece of the pie. Environments like digital twins provide a virtual representation of other physical systems, such as buildings, factories or production lines. These virtual environments are fed with the same data as the real situation, thereby providing an accurate picture of physical environment structure, status and behaviour.
AWS IoT TwinMaker
The newly introduced AWS IoT TwinMaker service enables administrators and developers to quickly create digital twin environments of equipment or processes and facilities. To do this, the tool primarily connects data from different data sources such as equipment sensors, video feeds and business applications. This data does not need to be collected in a single central environment first.
The tool has built-in data connectors for various AWS services such as AWS IoT SiteWise for device and time-series data, Amazon Kinesis Video Streams for video data, and Amazon S3 for storage and visual sources such as CAD files and data from business applications. AWS IoT TwinMaker also provides a framework to create data connectors for other data sources, such as Snowflake and Siemens MindSphere.
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Functionality
The tool can then be used to build a digital twin graphic that understands the relationships between the virtual representation of the ‘real world’ environments and the connected data sources. The data can be visualized using the import of 3D models, among others, to create a 3D environment of the existing physical systems or environment. Interactive video or sensor data overlays can be added to this from the connected sources.
Other connectible functionality includes ML models, simulation services and documentation such as manuals.
Linking with Amazon Managed Grafana
Furthermore, developers can use AWS IoT TwinMaker to create a digital twin to be made available to end users as a web-based application. For this purpose, the solution comes with a plugin for Grafana Labs’ managed service, Amazon Managed Grafana. This will also allow operators in factories or maintenance personnel to use Grafana applications to access the digital twin environment and leverage them to improve factory processes and equipment.
AWS IoT TwinMaker is now available in preview in the AWS regions of US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland) and Asia Pacific (Singapore). More regions will follow soon.
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