A Digital Twin Paradigm: Vehicle-to-Cloud Based Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Digital twin, an emerging representation of cyberphysical systems, has attracted increasing attentions very recently. It opens the way to real-time monitoring and synchronization of real-world activities with the virtual counterparts. In this study, we develop a digital twin paradigm using an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) for connected vehicles. By leveraging vehicle-to-cloud (V2C) communication, on-board devices can upload the data to the server through cellular network. The server creates a virtual world based on the received data, processes them with the proposed models, and sends them back to the connected vehicles. Drivers can benefit from this V2C based ADAS, even if all computations are conducted on the cloud. The cooperative ramp merging case study is conducted, and the field implementation results show the proposed digital twin framework can benefit the transportation systems regarding mobility and environmental sustainability with acceptable communication delays and packet losses.