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Welding Robot Digital Twin

A live 3D monitoring system that synchronizes physical welding robot joint data with a virtual Unreal Engine counterpart using IoT protocols, enabling remote supervision and anomaly detection.

RoboticsDigital TwinIoT / MQTTKinematicsReal-time Data
Square hero image of the robot digital twin system

Bridging the gap between the physical shop floor and digital monitoring, this project established a real-time data pipeline for an industrial welding robot. By subscribing to live sensor data via MQTT, the UE5 application mirrors the robot's kinematic movements and visualizes critical welding parameters such as temperature and voltage directly in 3D space.

  • Rigged and implemented forward and inverse kinematics for a 6-axis robotic arm in UE5.
  • Established a low-latency IoT connection using MQTT to stream real-world joint-angle data.
  • Developed a dynamic UI overlay for real-time hardware telemetry and monitoring.
  • Designed the skeletal mesh rigging and Control Rig setup for the robot.
  • Built the Unreal logic to parse incoming telemetry data and map it to robot motion.
  • Developed the data-visualization UI and warning logic for live parameter thresholds.
  • Rigging: Prepared the robot CAD model with accurate pivot points and joint hierarchies.
  • Communication Layer: Set up a local MQTT broker and built the Unreal-side client logic to parse incoming data streams.
  • Motion Mapping: Mapped received joint-angle values to the virtual robot through animation and rig logic.
  • Interface Layer: Designed floating UI elements to display welding status and live machine parameters.
  • Created a scalable template for bringing live heavy machinery into Unreal Engine.
  • Provided engineers with a safer remote 3D interface for observing hazardous welding operations.
  • Unreal Engine
  • Control Rig / URDF-based rig logic
  • Python
  • MQTT protocol for IoT data streaming
  • CAD-to-UE pipeline

Year

2022-2023

Group

Systems

Role

Simulation Engineer & Tech Artist

Duration

4 Months

Team

Collaborative Project

Deliverable

Real-time Monitoring Dashboard & 3D Environment

Tools

Python, MQTT, URDF, Unreal Engine

Tags

RoboticsDigital TwinIoT / MQTTKinematicsReal-time Data
Story Band
Joystick-based control of the robot-arm 3D model

Interactive Arm Control

Joystick-based input turns the virtual robot into a directly controllable model, making manual interaction clear and immediate inside the 3D scene.

MQTT-based command sending to the robot arm

MQTT Command Layer

The communication layer dispatches commands to the robot arm through MQTT, linking interface actions to machine behavior through a lightweight live protocol.

Media, interface, and process detail

Welding Robot Digital Twin: The core digital-twin moment: the virtual arm follows the physical robot in real time, turning live machine behavior into a readable spatial model.
The core digital-twin moment: the virtual arm follows the physical robot in real time, turning live machine behavior into a readable spatial model.
An architectural overview of the system pipeline, showing how interface input, MQTT messaging, robot commands, and 3D visualization are connected end to end.
The rigged 3D robot model provides the spatial and kinematic foundation for interaction, telemetry display, and real-time twin visualization.