Amazon Web Services Inc. is upping its game in the “internet of things” with the launch of two new services.

AWS IoT TwinMaker enables companies to create digital twins of physical assets, while AWS IoT FleetWise is designed to help customers manage data from fleets of smart vehicles.

Digital twins are virtual representations of things such as buildings, factories, production line equipment and so on that are updated regularly with real-world data to mimic the systems they represent. They’re often used to create simulations that can predict how a product, process or piece of equipment will perform.

“In the past, when you wanted to test a new product, you had to build a physical unit,” AWS Chief Executive Adam Selipsky said in his keynote address during its annual re:Invent conference today.

With the launch of AWS IoT TwinMaker, Selipsky made it clear that’s no longer necessary. Amazon customers will be able to create digital twins easily by connecting data from sources including applications and video feeds, without needing to move that data into a single repository first.

AWS said the service provides built-in connectors for services such as AWS IoT SiteWise, a managed service that simplifies collecting, organizing and analyzing industrial equipment data, as well as Amazon Kinesis Video Streams and Amazon S3. Once everything is connected, AWS IoT TwinMaker will spin up a knowledge graph that maps how the data sources are related and keep this up to date in real time. Customers can also import existing 3D models such as CAD and BIM files to create 3D visualizations, overlaying the knowledge graph data to create their digital twins.

Once a digital twin is up and running, customers will then be able to visualize their data in the context of the physical environment that creates it. To do this, AWS IoT TwinMaker creates a digital twin graph that combines the relationships between connected data sources and the virtual representations of user’s physical systems. In other words, users will be able to model their real-world environments.

They can even import existing 3D models to accurately represent existing spaces such as a factory floor. In addition, they can add interactive video and sensor data overlays together with insights from machine learning services.

The service includes a plugin for Amazon Managed Grafana, a managed version of the Grafana visualization platform.

AWS IoT General Manager Michael MacKenzie said the company created AWS IoT TwinMaker because customers had told it that the work involved in creating digital twins is too complicated and expensive and therefore prohibitive. “AWS IoT TwinMaker includes the built-in capabilities most customers need for their digital twins, such as connecting to data across disparate sources, modeling physical environments and visualization of data with spatial context,” he explained.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that the “packaged” services approach is becoming more common with Amazon, and that AWS IoT TwinMaker is the perfect example of this.

“Though customers could build everything from scratch using individual AWS services, it is much easier to use them in a prepackaged platform way like this,” Mueller explained. “As with all things prepackaged, what matters most is exactly what is in the package, and we will learn whether or not it’s enough when we see how customer adoption goes in the next few months.”

As for IoT FleetWise, this is a new service for customers operating fleets of connected vehicles. They can collect and standardize data across upwards of a million cars, vans or trucks. It allows users to apply intelligent filtering so they only extract the data they need, thereby reducing the volume of data being transmitted. It also comes with tools that allow car makers to perform remote diagnostics, analyze fleet heath and improve autonomous driving systems and safety features.

Users can define and model vehicle attributes, the sensors they use and so on from within the AWS management console, for individual vehicle types or for multiple vehicle types across their fleet. Once that’s done, the IoT FleetWise application is installed on the vehicle gateway, which is a communications hub inside the vehicle, so it can read, decode and transmit the desired data to the customer.

“The cloud is fundamentally changing [the automobile] industry, including how vehicles are designed and manufactured, the features they offer, how we drive,” Selipsky said during his keynote. “Automakers are designing vehicles that are fused with software connected by sensors, and systems generating enormous amounts of data.”

Amazon said AWS IoT TwinMaker is available now in preview in its US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Singapore) Regions, with availability in additional AWS Regions to come. AWS IoT FleetWise is available in preview now in the US East (N. Virginia) and Europe (Frankfurt) Regions.

Images: AWS