NESTA: Advancing Safe Human–Robot Collaboration through 6G and Digital Twin Technologies 

STAM develops advanced solutions at the intersection of Extended Reality (XR), Digital Twin technology, and intelligent human-robot collaboration. Within this domain, one of the most critical challenges facing modern industries is ensuring worker safety in environments where humans and autonomous robotic systems operate in close physical proximity. As robotic systems become increasingly integrated into operational environments, the relationship between humans and machines takes on critical importance, not only in terms of productivity and efficiency, but above all in terms of worker safety. Across industries ranging from manufacturing to healthcare and agriculture, intelligent robots are already performing repetitive daily tasks alongside human workers, complementing and extending human activity. Yet the closer the physical proximity between humans and machines, the more critical it becomes to manage that relationship carefully. In production environments in particular, where tasks are often repetitive and demanding, workers may gradually lose focus or awareness of the machines operating around them and it is precisely in those moments of inattention that risks arise with meaningful threats to workers’ health.

To address this challenge, STAM has developed NESTA, an advanced XR solution that leverages the company’s deep expertise in simulation and immersive technologies. NESTA first creates an immersive simulated environment in Virtual Reality (VR), using headset devices to expose operators to realistic human-robot interaction scenarios in a fully controlled and risk-free setting. This approach enables workers to build familiarity, confidence, and situational awareness before ever entering a live operational environment.

At the technical core of NESTA is a Digital Twin of an industrial robotic arm (for instance a Universal Robot UR10 model) deployed within the Aston University 6G-PATH testbed and available in STAM’s laboratories in Italy. This virtual replica mirrors the real robot’s movements with real-time fidelity, allowing human operators to experience genuine collaboration scenarios without exposure to physical hazards.

This work is being carried out within the framework of the 6G-PATH Project, a European research initiative whose goal is to foster the development and integration of new tools and technologies within 5G/6G networks, while measuring relevant KPIs across 4 strategic verticals: Health, Education, Smart Cities, and Farming. To achieve this goal, the project brings together 7 testbeds deployed across a consortium of partners, supporting use cases for validating next-generation network capabilities in real-world conditions. Through its Open Call mechanism, 6G-PATH invited external innovators to contribute new use cases and expand the community of experimentation. It is precisely within this framework that STAM successfully participated in and won 6G-PATH Project Open Call with the NESTA project, where the communication infrastructure is provided by the 6G-PATH network, which ensures the ultra-low latency and high reliability required to synchronize physical and virtual systems in real time.

By integrating VR, Digital Twin technology, and live data synchronization, NESTA pursues a dual objective by exploiting 6G novel capabilities: on one hand, it enhances operators’ perceived safety and confidence in working alongside autonomous systems; on the other, it provides a rigorous framework for testing safety algorithms and evaluating the reliability of synthetic data generated by the twin.

Through its innovative integration of 6G, Extended Reality (XR), and Digital Twin technologies, NESTA paves the way for a new generation of safe, efficient, and human-centered industrial environments, supporting the evolution of smart manufacturing and agriculture. Together, these capabilities position NESTA as a meaningful step toward industrial ecosystems that are not only more efficient, but genuinely safer for the people working within them.

The NESTA Project presented at the STEALTH General Assembly in Genoa, Italy

The NESTA Project Poster