Digital Twin Center for Open Research and Engineering (DT-CORE) project

The Digital Twin Center for Open Research and Engineering (DT-CORE) project is supported by the Poul Due Jensen Foundation with a personal grant to Professor Peter Gorm Larsen as the principle investigator at 15MDKK. Lukas Esterle and Claudio Gomes are co-Pis for this project and they are both heavily involved in this research project.

The project started 2025 and it will last for 5 years. This basic research project is conducted purely by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Aarhus University. As a continuation of the DiT4CPS (Digital Twins for Cyber-Physical systems), the goal of DT-CORE is to establish Aarhus as the place to visit and collaborate with if one is interested in exploring the limits of digital twins in an open research perspective. Thus, funding has also been set aside to support researchers who lack their own funding for such a visit.

The research is structured in four areas of research also identified in the book about Engineering of Digital Twins:

Foundations: This includes the development of a basis for placing well-understood levels of reliance on the services offered by Digital Twins (DTs). Key to this is mastering the uncertainties that arise from elements of DT-enabled systems and their environments, so that a DT’s predictions are fit for purpose and can safely and securely be used to inform decisions that affects DTs’ corresponding Physical Twins (PTs).
Platform: It can be costly and challenging to develop and maintain a DT, and so there is a line of valuable work to be done in making the engineering of DTs for applications both more affordable and sustainable. Goals here include the automation of DT operation through offering platforms and tools that have potentially wide user bases (including extensions of our already established of Digital Twin as a Service).
Autonomy: Can DTs present a route towards dependable autonomy for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs)? There are decisions to be made in either trusting DTs to influence the physical world directly or in augmenting existing autonomy accordingly. Research and innovation here also involves ways to provide a “learned cognitive capability” inside the DT by deductive and inductive means.
Hierarchy: The composition of DTs and by extension the composition of their DT-enabled systems is an interesting research challenge. Such compositions range from simple fleets of near-identical and non-interfering products to more heterogeneous Systems of Systems (SoSs) in which reliance comes to be placed on the qualities of the emergent collaboration.

The target is to establish a series of “sister”-projects that will enhance the research conducted inside DT-CORE also outside the area of Cyber-Physical Systems that originally was the target for the research that has been carried out already. Many of the “sister”-projects will also be carried out in direct collaboration with industrial partners, creating direct impact of the research results achieved in the DT-CORE project on the society at large.