When robotic equipment enters an operational setting – a nuclear facility, a fusion research site, or any complex environment – there’s no room for error. Every motion must be precise, every clearance must be safe, and every maneuver must be validated before it actually takes place.

In the third and final part of our series on revolutionizing remote handling, we explore the benefits of live monitoring, running a digital twin of robotic equipment synchronously with real-life operations. It’s made possible by the VR4Robots Live Monitoring module.

When does live monitoring deliver the best value?

Live monitoring is a powerful tool in industries where reliability and safety are mission-critical. It brings huge value to operational environments where:

• Every maneuver must be validated before execution
• Your environment is too cramped for additional sensors
• Cameras degrade or fail due to radiation or contamination
• You want to test ‘what-if’ scenarios in real time
• You’re conducting long-reach operations where deflections are an issue
• You must document procedures for compliance or traceability
• Teams need a shared view for collaborative decision-making

Supporting the full lifecycle of your robot

Most remote-handling robots are one-off designs, built for specific, high-risk tasks. As someone responsible for delivering reliable robotic systems in hazardous or hard-to-reach environments, you know that design, engineering, and training are only part of the process. A robot’s lifecycle broadly follows three phases:

1. Design and engineering

You begin with specifications and models. Reachability, strength, collision zones, and other issues discovered here save you significant cost and rework later. With the ability to import CAD to VR, you can now bring your designs directly into VR4Robots and test critical functions early.  See Part 1 to uncover how VR4Robots accelerates robotic engineering.

2. Operator training

Once the physical design is underway, you can move into operational training. Because your robot’s software is custom-made, it needs validation inside a realistic digital environment. VR4Robots lets you test your logic, refine procedures, and evaluate how multiple systems interact. Read Part 2 to find out how VR4Robots enhances operator training.

3. Live monitoring

When your robot enters service, whether for inspection, maintenance, or hazardous-material handling, your team controls it remotely. This is when Live Monitoring becomes invaluable. Using a digital twin of robotic equipment within a realistic, virtual model of the real-world environment, your team gets a total view of their worksite. 

Why live monitoring matters

Each of the phases builds confidence and reduces the risk of costly or dangerous mistakes. By the time you reach deployment, VR4Robots has already helped you validate design assumptions, troubleshoot procedures, and train your team. Next, it supports the most critical phase: safe execution.

Operating a robot in a challenging environment is often done without all the information. Traditional monitoring tools simply don’t give your operators the full picture. Sensors fail, cameras have limited fields of view, and environmental factors such as radiation or poor lighting restrict what operators can see. 

Physical constraints like narrow corridors, cluttered environments, and the inability to install extra hardware make real-world visibility even more limited. Live monitoring fills these gaps with a digital twin that moves in perfect sync with the real robot. Using VR4Robots, the operator is capable of viewing the procedure from any angle and any position. In VR it is also possible to hide objects that obstruct a clear view.

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“A virtual environment is never too dark, never too reflective, and never grainy or radiated to the point your lenses are corrupted.”

– Sander Tolsma, Technical Manager, Tree C Technology

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Introducing VR4Robots’ Live Monitoring module

With VR4Robots’ Live Monitoring module, every command you send to your robot is simultaneously sent to a digital twin inside VR4Robots. This gives you:

• A real-time digital twin: You see the robot’s exact pose, motion, and location in a clean, uncluttered virtual space from any angle, even when physical cameras fail.
• Predictive ‘ghost robot’ mode: Before operators commit to a move, they can send commands to the virtual test robot. If the planned trajectory is safe, they green-light the real robot. This sharply reduces risk, especially in environments where dropping a tool or making contact with a structure could result in months of downtime.
• Accurate physics and deflection simulation: Recent enhancements mean VR4Robots can now show structural deflections under load, which is crucial for long-reach or heavy-duty robots. You can see real-time clearances and potential contact points as they shift.
• Operator confidence and control: Remote-handling operators often work with high cognitive load and limited sensory feedback. Live monitoring expands their situational awareness, giving them clarity where physical sensors cannot.

Why live monitoring in VR4Robots matters

If your robot gets built in the engineering phase and the training phase prepares your people for using it, then live monitoring is where all that preparation proves its worth. With VR4Robots, you don’t need to take any chances because you can see everything clearly ahead of time. 

Our live monitoring module supports:

• Improved operational safety
• Reduced downtime
• Greater control
• Enhanced clarity for operators
• Faster troubleshooting
• Better training and documentation
• Greater confidence in planned tasks

VR4Robots ensures continuity across the entire lifecycle, from design to operations, so that when your robot enters the environment it was built for, you and your team are fully prepared. And it continues to evolve, with features like the session module leading the way in operational accountability, insight, and collaboration.

The Live Monitoring module is the culmination of everything we, and our clients, have spent years developing, validating, and training on. It gives your engineers confidence in the equipment, your operators the visibility they need, and your organization the assurance that each operation can be executed with the precision it demands.

Speak to one of our experts to find out more