M4E #57: What is an Asset Administration Shell (AAS)?
On M4E #45 we talked about RAMI 4.0, the Reference Architecture Model for Industry 4.0 developed by the German Plattform Industrie 4.0 to help companies and organizations in the manufacturing industry to implement the principles of Industry 4.0. Also, on M4E #17 the concept of Digital Twin was presented. What happens when you join both concepts and want to standardize Digital Twin representations: the Asset Administration Shell or AAS is born. Check the next video from industry40.tv to find about this concept and standard.
Time for Insights
The Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA) is in charge of standardizing the AAS and all its features. As told in the video, one of its components are the submodels which refer to a fundamental concept used to structure and organize information about physical assets within the digital representation provided by an AAS. Submodels are a way to break down the information about an asset into specific categories or aspects and the IDTA is also in charge of standardizing them. You can check a list of submodels here, with some examples being the Time Series submodel, the Carbon Footprint submodel or the Handover Documentation submodel.
Stahl has an online demo of AAS with some of their products that have submodels with static information such as the Nameplate, Technical Information, Documentation… You may check it here.
Currently, there are some open source implementations of the AAS. You may check the Eclipse AAS4J project, the Eclipse Basyx project or FA³ST service.