Autonomous Vehicle for Industry 5.0: Digital Twin for System Safety Validation

Autonomy and digitalization are megatrends in today’s world and influence our everyday lives on many levels. The same applies to industry, whereas the manufacturing and engineering industry is heavily under digitalization, also known as Industry 4.0. Now the next step is to focus on where human-centric and sustainable resilient processes are considered a priority. This is an Industry 5.0 paradigm, where humans and robots must work together, with social aspects and increased safety in mind. From the product development and engineering point of view, realistic system simulations and digital counterparts are beneficial to ensure proper complex system development and interactions between robots and humans. In this research, we investigate the methodology to design and implement a comprehensive digital twin of an Autonomous Vehicle (AV) interacting in the context of Industry 5.0 and modern industrial environments. We propose a step-by-step digital twin creation methodology for industrial environments where the AV shuttle bus is intended to serve as a mobility service for the workforce connected to industrial processes. In this research, the main focus is a safety assessment and simulations of an AV interaction in the environment and humans. However, the digital twin, once created, can be used for many other simulations and different purposes.