Semantic-aware Digital Twin for Metaverse: A Comprehensive Review

TL;DR

This paper reviews the integration of semantic-aware digital twins within the Metaverse, emphasizing a smart industrial application that enhances performance through semantic communication and demonstrates its potential in future industrial scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a digital twin framework with semantic communication tailored for industrial Metaverse applications, bridging semantic awareness with digital twin technology.

Findings

Demonstrates improved shopfloor management using semantic communication

Provides an overview of integrating semantic communication with digital twins and Metaverse

Highlights potential industrial benefits of semantic-aware digital twins

Abstract

To facilitate the deployment of digital twins in Metaverse, the paradigm with semantic awareness has been proposed as a means for enabling accurate and task-oriented information extraction with inherent intelligence. However, this framework requires all devices in the Metaverse environment to be directly linked with the semantic model to enable faithful interpretation of messages. In contrast, this article introduces the digital twin framework, considering a smart industrial application, which enables semantic communication in conjugation with the Metaverse enabling technologies. The fundamentals of this framework are demonstrated on an industrial shopfloor management use case with a digital twin so as to improve its performance through semantic communication. An overview of semantic communication, Metaverse, and digital twins is presented. Integration of these technologies with the basic architecture as well as the impact on future industrial applications is presented. In a nutshell, this article showcases how semantic awareness can be an effective candidate in the implementation of digital twins for Metaverse applications.