The Asset Administration Shell (AAS) plays a key role in Industry 4.0, providing a standardized digital representation of industrial assets to enable interoperability and data exchange. However, information retrieval with complex queries is still in its infancy despite recent advances in the specification of a dedicated query language, which will be hard to implement for different SDKs and storage back-ends.This paper proposes an event-driven architecture that integrates AAS contents into a Neo4j-based knowledge graph using Apache Kafka. This enables powerful, relationship-oriented Cypher queries for complex information retrieval and supports advanced cross-validation of references. The knowledge graph will be kept in sync with changes in the AAS. This establishes a solid foundation for advanced natural language user interfaces. As a proof-of-concept, we implemented an AI agent using a Large Language Model (LLM) and a standardized Neo4j tool integration by means of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for question answering.Thus, the paper contributes to making the AAS more accessible and actionable for AI-driven industrial applications in a broad range of use cases without the need for a dedicated query language. The source code is publicly available on GitHub.

Modern Digital Twin standards and technologies, designed to enable smart factories in line with the Industry 4.0 vision, have not yet addressed all the challenges associated with contemporary digital twins. This paper shows how to leverage the Asset Administration Shell as an Industry 4.0 compliant Digital Twin technology to provide all necessary data for Artificial Intelligence Planning, represented via the Planning Domain Definition Language. For this purpose, a model for preconditions and effects of planning actions is defined. This model is applied to three different use cases showing different problems of fetching data from different partially standardized shell templates including three defined actions of transport, assembly, and storage.

Industrial testbeds are spawning all across Europe, focusing on diverse topics. In our Human-Robot-Collaboration lab, we are researching how the lives of people in production can be made simpler through the use of collaborative robots, but still safe against the backdrop of the necessary changeability. Standardized digital twins based on Asset Administration Shells embedded in a service-oriented architecture are an ideal underlying information technology for this endeavor. In this paper, we describe such an infrastructure and outline its use based on two different use cases. We are convinced that this is not only relevant for testbed operators who want to achieve technical and semantic interoperability of their facilities, but can also serve as a blueprint for the implementation of Industrie 4.0 in small and medium-sized enterprises.

The digitization of value chains is an ongoing challenge in production. The Asset Administration Shell (AAS) aims to address this issue. Besides standardization activities, there is however little architectural guidance on how to bridge the gap between potential AAS use-cases and realization.In this paper, we describe four AAS related use-cases that we derived from 15 application projects which adopted the AAS into industrial contexts. For each of the four use-cases, we devise an architecture blueprint that documents our experiences when applying the AAS. By utilizing these blueprints, practitioners can benefit from our experiences when implementing the AAS and bridge the gap between use-cases and implementation more easily.

We present a new multimodal interaction sequence for a mobile multimodal Business-to-Business interaction system. A mobile client application on the iPhone supports users in accessing an online service marketplace and allows business experts to intuitively search and browse for services using natural language speech and gestures while on the go. For this purpose, we utilize an ontology-based multimodal dialogue platform as well as an integrated trainable gesture recognizer.

Moving in virtual environments has become very common. On the one hand there are e.g. non-interactive route guidance systems which are not adequate for pedestrians. On the other hand interactive applications like Second Life fascinate a broad community.