Amazon Web Services announced its IoT TwinMaker digital-twin platform and IoT FleetWise for handling car data at AWS Re:Invent this week in Las Vegas.

TwinMaker is a service that helps developers build digital twins of real-world systems including buildings, factories, industrial equipment, and production lines faster and more easily. Virtual representations of physical systems that are updated with real-world data on a regular basis to replicate the structure, status, and behavior of the objects they represent are known as digital twins.

TwinMaker is supposed to make it easier for developers to aggregate data from a variety of sources, including equipment sensors, video cameras, and business applications, to construct a knowledge graph that simulates the real-world environment.

TwinMaker comes with built-in interfaces for AWS IoT SiteWise, Amazon Kinesis Video Streams, and Amazon S3, but users may also add their own connectors for data sources like Amazon Timestream and Snowflake to make data collection easier.

It produces a knowledge graph that automatically mixes and analyses the relationships between the connected data sources, allowing it to update the digital twin with real-time data from the system being modelled.

“Customers are excited about the opportunity to use digital twins to improve their operations and processes, but the work involved in creating a digital twin and custom applications for different use cases is complicated, expensive and prohibitive for most,” said Michael MacKenzie, general manager at AWS IoT. “AWS IoT TwinMaker includes the built-in capabilities most customers need for their digital twins, such as connecting to data across disparate sources, modelling physical environments, and visualization of data with spatial context.”

Carmakers can gather, transform, and send vehicle data to the cloud in near-real-time using FleetWise, which makes it easier and more cost-effective. They can gather and organize data in any format found in their vehicles, regardless of make, model, or options, and standardize the data format for cloud analysis.

Developers can decrease network traffic by picking data to transfer and setting rules for when to transfer it depending on criteria like weather, location, or vehicle type.

They can use the data in the cloud for applications that remotely diagnose issues in individual vehicles, analyze vehicle fleet health to help prevent potential recalls or safety issues, or use analytics and machine learning to improve technologies like autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems.

“While automakers have collected, stored and analysed vehicle data for years, they are not equipped to manage the explosion of data generated by advanced vehicle safety and autonomous driving systems, nor have they had access to the near-real-time data needed to help proactively address vehicle problems,” said Mike Tzamaloukas, general manager of IoT automotive at AWS. “With AWS IoT FleetWise, automakers can now efficiently collect these data, transform them and gain deep, actionable insights on the condition and usage of vehicles on the road. Automakers can now use the power of AWS to help maintain millions of vehicles, increase vehicle safety and improve customer service.”

FleetWise now gets support from Otonomo Technologies, a mobility intelligence platform supplier.

“Today’s connected cars are already data centres on wheels, each generating gigabytes of data per hour,” said Tzamaloukas. “The collaboration between Otonomo and AWS will accelerate automakers and their partners capabilities to put this massive amount of data to use creating new and innovative solutions that will advance the entire mobility industry.”

Otonomo will find it easier to process and send the enormous amounts of vehicle data it manages daily into AWS workloads thanks to FleetWise’s capabilities and sophisticated filtering capabilities. Otonomo expects its customers to be able to construct connected automobile apps as a result of the improved pace.

“At Otonomo, we’re committed to driving smarter decisions and services for our customers through the utilisation of connected vehicle data,” said Ben Volkow, CEO of Otonomo. “Today’s announcement helps automakers collect and transfer data to the cloud more easily and efficiently than ever before. We are thrilled to expand our work leveraging AWS and are excited about the additional capabilities made possible.”

TwinMaker and FleetWise have no upfront contracts or costs, and users just pay for the AWS services they use, according to the company.