Toward the Creation of a Digital Twin Authoring Tool: A Smart Mobility Perspective in Smart Cities

Transforming the livability of citizens by combining data, resources, and infrastructure is one of the fundamental goals of a smart city. A smart city is an aggregation of data and live analysis. Smart mobility can be equated with the smart planning of vehicle infrastructure in smart cities. Digital twin (DT) is an advanced concept for creating digital replicas of physical assets in a virtual space to mimic the physical assets for different test scenarios. With DTs, efficient smart mobility can be planned in smart cities to improve transport systems. However, manually generating digital replicas in a virtual environment is cumbersome. Automatic 3D reconstruction of vehicles to be used as DTs in a virtual environment can save a lot of labor. Therefore, we propose a digital twin authoring tool (DTAT) for generating DTs from a smart mobility perspective. The proposed DTAT ingests diverse data types from internet-of-things sensors, such as images and 3D CAD models. The reconstructed 3D models are used as DTs of physical vehicles in a virtual environment. The 3D reconstruction in our proposed DTAT is based on pre-trained models. To provide an immersive experience to city stakeholders, we develop a virtual reality (VR) based representation of vehicles in cyberspace. Our approach extends beyond mere visualization, enabling the running of various simulations within the virtual environment to gain comprehensive analytical insights. These simulations include advanced applications like public transport system optimization, using 3D models and real-time data to simulate and improve vehicle routes, minimizing travel times and maximizing coverage. This particular application demonstrates the practicality and effectiveness of our DTAT in enhancing urban mobility management. We showcase the capabilities of our proposed solution through a VR application, illustrating how it can be a transformative tool in the planning and management of smart city transport systems. Implementing our DTAT streamlines the creation of digital twins and significantly contributes to the smarter, more efficient, and sustainable movement within urban landscapes.