A Novel Convolutional Vision Transformer Network for Effective Level-of-Detail Awareness in Digital Twins

In this paper, we propose a novel integrated model architecture, called a level-of-detail (LoD)-aware convolutional vision transformer network (LCvT). It is designed to enhance digital twin (DT) synchronization by effectively integrating LoD awareness in DTs through hierarchical image classification. LCvT employs a vision transformer (ViT)-based backbone coupled with dedicated branch networks for each LoD. This integration of ViT and branch networks ensures that key features are accurately detected and tailored to the specific objectives of each detail level while also efficiently extracting common features across all levels. Furthermore, LCvT leverages a coarse-to-fine inference strategy and incorporates an early exit mechanism for each LoD, which significantly reduces computational overhead without compromising accuracy. This design enables a single model to dynamically adapt to varying LoD requirements in real-time, offering substantial improvements in inference time and resource efficiency compared to deploying separate models for each level. Through extensive experiments on benchmark datasets, we demonstrate that LCvT outperforms existing methods in accuracy and efficiency across all LoDs, especially in DT synchronization scenarios where LoD requirements fluctuate dynamically.