A software engineering approach to ease the development and to ensure the usability of interactive digital twins

Context

Digital twins are virtual representations of real-world products, systems, or processes, enabling simulation, integration, testing, monitoring, and maintenance. They play a pivotal role in optimizing> The Engineering Digital Twin EDT program, funded by the France 2030 investment plan, is a national initiative aimed at advancing the scientific and technical foundations of d>

According to the definition given by the Alliance for the Industry of the Future (AIF) working under the aegis of the Strategic Sector Committee (CSF) “Solutions for the Industry of the Future” (SIF) [1], “A Digital Twin is an organized set of digital models representing a real-world entity designed to address specific issues and uses. The Digital Twin is updated in relation to reality, with a frequency and precision adapted to its issues and uses. The Digital Twin is equipped with advanced operating tools, including the ability to understand, analyze, predict or optimize the operation and management of the real entity”[2].

By its very nature, a digital twin strongly relies on data visualization and user interactions: a DT usually embeds interactive systems (that we call “interactive digital twins”) that enable users to interact with both the physical and digital twins and their large amount of associated data [3]. Those interactive digital twins can take multiple formsin terms of presentation, from fully digital Virtual Reality immersive systems to hybrid Augmented Reality ones [4], but also classical graphical user interfaces(2Ds). This presentation may be manipulation by means of standard physical input devices (mouse, keyboard, microphones, …) or specific/dedicatd ones (control boards, spacemouse, …).

Building such interactive digital twins from scratch and in a craft way is time-consuming and may prevent the generalization of DT as industrial tools [5] limiting the benefits to be expected from their deployment. The engineering of their user interfaces is indeed highy challenging as the interactive features need to be adapted to the moving target of the digital twin under development. Beyond, as the digital twin is usually not existing yet, potential users and their tasks are difficult to identify making cumbersome the applicability of classical user centered design approaches. This means that the engineering of interactive digital twins will require the definition of systematic and specific software engineering approaches for the functional core of the IDT as well as systematic and specific engineering approaches for its interactive part.

Thesis Objectives

The goal of the PhD is to propose novel software engineering approaches to ease and support the development of reliable and usable interactive digital twins. To do so, the candidate will investigate model-based approaches and domain-specific languages as well as tools to support them.

An example of the models considered are task models which are useful when designing systems with usability as a key property in mind. Indeed, they describe and structure information related to user goals and activities to be carried out to reach those goals [6]. A key challenge consists in characterizing generic tasks that are performed with any interactive digital twin to better understand what users aim to achieve with digital twins. To ensure usability (and especially the effectiveness) of digital twins, the identification of specific tasks must also be performed thouroughly to identify specific features that must be provided by the digital twin uner study. A challenge with such approaches is to integrate task models within digital twin development approaches to guide the design and evaluation of interactive digital twins. For example, using task models ar run time to continuously monitor and evaluate the usages of a digital twins to then improve its usability is a possible research path.

An example of a domain-specific language (DSL) would be a language dedicated to the specification of the interactive features of the digital twin. Such modelling techniques must be supported by dedicated graphical modeling, simulation and analysis of the DSL [7] and would allow complete and unambiguous description of the digital twin. Developers of interactive digital twins can then use such approaches to accelerate development, validation and verification.

During this work, the PhD candidate will propose new scientific contributions supported by the development of demonstrators and prototypes.

Work Environment

The PhD candidate will be co-supervised by Arnaud Blouin, Benoit Combemale (Univ Rennes, IRISA, Inria, Rennes) and Philippe Palanque (IRIT, Toulouse) within DiverSE research group.

The PhD will take place within the national Engineering Digital Twin project. The expected use case will be connected to the datathing company in Luxembourg https://datathings.com/ and more precisely to KOPR digital twin they developed for the electrical grid https://kopr-twin.com/. Close cooperation will be setup with the company which will share their access to the underlying system and its end-users.

What You Will Gain from This PhD

This PhD offers the opportunity to:

• Work within DiverSE, a dynamic and recognized research group in software engineering
• Develop highly sought-after skills in software engineering, human-computer interaction engineering, and digital twins
• Collaborate with leading partners (Inria, CEA, CNRS, etc.) and validate your research on real-world industrial use cases.
• Join a network of PhD candidates within the EDT program, fostering collaboration, peer support, and interdisciplinary exchanges.
• Contribute to an open-source platform (Artemis) and publish in international conferences and journals.
• Gain recognition in a rapidly growing field, with career prospects in academic research, industrial R&D, or entrepreneurship.

Upon completion, you will be positioned as a recognized expert in a key domain for industry and research, with diverse professional opportunities in France and internationally.

References

[1] https://numeum.fr/jumeau-numerique-levier-majeur-de-la-transformation-digitale-de-lindustrie

[2] A Digital Twin use cases classification and definition framework based on Industrial feedback. Emmanuelle Abisset-Chavanne, Thierry Coupaye, Fahad R. Golra, Damien Lamy, Ariane Piel, Olivier Scart, and Pascale Vicat-Blanc. Computers in Industry, 161:104113, 2024. 5, 31

[3] Digital twin paradigm: A systematic literature review. Concetta Semeraro, Mario Lezoche, Hervé Panetto, and Michele Dassisti. Computers in Industry, 130:103469, 2021. 28

[4] Embedded data representations. Wesley Willett, Yvonne Jansen, and Pierre Dragicevic. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 23(1):461–470, 2017. 28

[5] Engineering Digital Twins: A Research Roadmap. Combemale et al. EDTconf 2025-2nd International Conference on Engineering Digital Twin https://inria.hal.science/hal-05223776/document

[6] Engineering Task-based Augmented Reality Guidance: Application to the Training of Aircraft Flight Procedures Lallai et al. https://academic.oup.com/iwc/article-abstract/33/1/17/6190181

[7] Augmenting graphical modeling workbenches with semantic-aware interactive features, Théo Giraudet, Arnaud Blouin, Benoit Combemale, Mélanie Bats, Pierre-Charles David. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction , 2025, 9 (4), pp.1-29.