A Digital Twinning Platform for Integrated Sensing, Communications and Robotics

TL;DR

This work addresses the integration of indoor sensing, communication, and robotics through a digital twin that couples ray tracing based environment models with real sensors. It proposes a ROS based DT framework that supports real time synchronization between simulated and physical agents, leveraging off the shelf hardware and ray tracing capable channels to enable joint ISAC and robotics experiments. Key contributions include the first DT for ISAC and robotics with a real world sensor interface, a modular implementation that fuses simulated and real data, and experimental validation of indoor localization accuracy using the DT. The platform offers a practical path toward rapid prototyping and testing of 6G inspired ISAC and robot navigation scenarios, with potential benefits for energy efficient planning and networked task coordination in complex indoor environments.

Abstract

In this paper, a digital twinning framework for indoor integrated sensing, communications, and robotics is proposed, designed, and implemented. Besides leveraging powerful robotics and ray-tracing technologies, the framework also enables integration with real-world sensors and reactive updates triggered by changes in the environment. The framework is designed with commercial, off-the-shelf components in mind, thus facilitating experimentation in the different areas of communication, sensing, and robotics. Experimental results showcase the feasibility and accuracy of indoor localization using digital twins and validate our implementation both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: High-level overview of the system architecture
• Figure 2: Schematic flow of the simulation
• Figure 3: Blender rendering of the experimental space
• Figure 4: Modified Turtlebot3 platform used in experiments
• Figure 5: View of the experimental setup. The white curve is a qualitative representation of the circular trajectory the robot needs to follow.