Product function and performance tests considering user interactions provide crucial feedback in product development. Smart Hybrid Prototyping (SHP) systems have been recently studied for such tests even when products are partially or not yet physically available, can accommodate various products through systems’ modularization. This study proposes a modular SHP system with novel cyber-physical interactions, used in product development, involving real-time communication, simulation, and synchronization based on the concept of digital twins. The modular SHP system has been demonstrated via analysis of a car’s decklid opening and closing characteristics, in which the physical interaction between the modular SHP system and the user is realized with the digital twin representing a part of the car connected with the digital twin of a sensing and actuation mechanism. Major conclusions of the study are that (1) modularization is realized using the standards for the interfaces comprising a SHP system such as Asset Administration Shell (AAS) and Functional Mock-up Unit and Functional Mock-up Interface (FMU/FMI), and (2) the specifications of a SHP system in digital domain depend on the update frequency of the digital twins, where, a higher update frequency was realized by separation of the recording data flow from the processing data flow, and by determination of appropriate range of simulation time step of FMU, which is between 0.001 sec and 0.0025 sec.
Komoto et al. (Thu,) studied this question.