Digital Representation of NDE Systems: Data Networking and Information Modeling

To enhance the measuring capabilities of modern Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) devices, it has become essential to integrate standardized digitization services and industry-compliant functionalities. This perspective paper examines approaches for improving NDE systems by incorporating key Industry 4.0 technologies, specifically digital representations such as the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) and OPC UA (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture). We discuss requirements for interoperable, semantically rich descriptions of NDE systems, outline how OPC UA information models and AAS submodels can be combined with MQTT-based transport, and illustrate these concepts through representative prototype implementations, including predictive maintenance and chatbot assistant use cases. By leveraging these technologies, NDE devices can be transformed into interoperable, data-rich, and intelligent components within smart industrial ecosystems. Compared with previous studies, this Perspective is the first to systematically bring together the requirements, architectural patterns, and evaluation criteria for digital representations designed specifically for NDE systems. It also provides, in a practical and accessible way, NDE-focused OPC UA and AAS-based architectures that support both predictive maintenance and LLM-assisted operator guidance. The presented implementations are at an early stage and serve as illustrative examples, while systematic quantitative validation is ongoing and is outlined as future work.