Invitation: MS Thesis Defense of Chris Bryan Ngnaguepa

Hello ME Community,
You are invited to join the MS Thesis Defense of Chris Bryan Ngnaguepa, on Friday, May 29, beginning at 10:30am.  The defense will be presented in person in the Engineering Building room 210-I (Mechanical Engineering Conference Room).

Advisor: Dr. TseHuai Roy Wu

Title:  Enhancing Collaborative Robot Safety Through Vision-Based Monitoring AndDigital Twin Technology

Abstract: This thesis presents a vision-based safety monitoring system for collaborative robotics that implements speed and separation monitoring as defined in ISO/TS 15066 using stereo vision, real-time object detection, and digital twin synchronization. The system is implemented on a DOBOT CR3 collaborative robot and its VxSIM™ digital twin, with a ZED 2i stereo camera providing depth-based human detection. The initial separated configuration consists of two independent safety paths: a robot-only separation distance monitor and a VxSIM-only collision detector. These are unified into an integrated system where VxSIM™ handles detection and TwinStream performs separation distance evaluation. Experimental validation confirms that both the physical and twin-based safety paths achieve full protective stop success under all tested conditions.