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review article

Multi-robot collaborative manufacturing driven by digital twins: Advancements, challenges, and future directions

Wang, Gang
•
Zhang, Cheng
•
Liu, Sichao  
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October 1, 2025
Journal of Manufacturing Systems

Multi-robot systems envisioned for future factories will promote advancements and capabilities of handling complex tasks and realising optimal robotic operations. However, existing multi-robot systems face challenges such as integration complexity, difficult coordination and control, low scalability, and flexibility, and thus are far from realising adaptive and efficient multi-robot collaborative manufacturing (MRCM). Digital twin technology improves visualisation, consistency, and spatial–temporal collaboration in MRCM through real-time interaction and iterative optimisation in physical and virtual spaces. Despite these improvements, barriers such as undeveloped modelling capabilities, indeterminate collaborative strategies, and limited applicability impede widespread integration of MRCM. In response to these needs, this study provides a comprehensive review of the foundational concepts, systematic architecture, and enabling technologies of digital twin-driven MRCM, serving as a prospective vision for future work in collaborative intelligent manufacturing. With the development of sensors and computational capabilities, robot intelligence is evolving towards multi-robot collaboration, including perceptual, cognitive, and behavioural collaboration. Digital twins play a critical supporting role in multi-robot collaboration, and the architecture, methodologies, and applications are elaborated across diverse stages of MRCM processes. This paper also identifies current challenges and future research directions. It encourages academic and industrial stakeholders to integrate state-of-the-art AI technologies more thoroughly into multi-robot digital twin systems for enhanced efficiency and reliability in production.

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Type
review article
DOI
10.1016/j.jmsy.2025.06.014
Scopus ID

2-s2.0-105008790890

Author(s)
Wang, Gang

Northwestern Polytechnical University

Zhang, Cheng

Northwestern Polytechnical University

Liu, Sichao  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Zhao, Yongxuan

Northwestern Polytechnical University

Zhang, Yingfeng

Northwestern Polytechnical University

Wang, Lihui

The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

Date Issued

2025-10-01

Published in
Journal of Manufacturing Systems
Volume

82

Start page

333

End page

361

Subjects

Collaborative manufacturing

•

Digital twin

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Multi-robot system

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Robot

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
BIOROB  
FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Program of China

2023ZY01050

Vetenskapsrådet

2023-00493,2024/5-164,2025/22-791

Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi

2023-JC-JQ-39

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Available on Infoscience
July 1, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/251763
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