Testing & Validation
Building repeatable evidence from real mechatronic systems.
// robotics · control · embedded systems
Luca Obwegs
Research Engineer / Project Manager Mechatronics
Based in Buchs SG, Switzerland
I build the hardware and software to find out whether a mechatronic system actually works.
2 patent applications filed 5 industrial prototypes at Hilti IEEE World Haptics WIP
T-01 · 2023Hydraulic Exoskeleton
P-11Double PendulumIn progress
P-09 · 2026tiny vario
P-07 · 20243D Printed Drone
P-06 · 2023Balancing Robot
P-03 · 2023Bilateral Teleoperation
P-02 · 20226 DOF Robotic Arm
P-08Two-Axis Robotic Platform
P-04 · 2023Torque-Sensing Actuator
P-01 · 2020Variometer
P-10MicroDuck RLComing soon
Personal project
Thesis
University course project
Select a hexagon to open or locate a project
about.md
Hey! I'm Luca Obwegs from Italy. I love robots, climbing and learning new things.
At Hilti's robotics lab, I design and build test setups for mechatronic and robotic platforms, automate tests and data logging in Python, analyse results to find failure modes, and feed findings back into design. I have contributed to five prototypes from simulation to hardware testing and supported customer acceptance tests for Stop Assist for power tools.
I work hands-on in the workshop with mechanical and electrical equipment, assembling mechatronic test setups and prototypes. I coordinate test and integration across mechanical, electronics and software engineers.
My projects combine test setups and measurement with embedded C++, Python data tools and ROS 2 interfaces, so I can take a mechatronic system from a first prototype to repeatable evidence of how it performs.
Feel free to get in touch or take a look at my work below.
- Testing & validation
- Test automation
- DAQ & sensor data
- Robotics
- Embedded systems
- 3D printing & CAD
languages
- Germannative
- Italiannative
- Englishfluent
- Ladinnative
- 11Engineering projects & thesis
- 5Industrial prototypes at Hilti
- 2Patent applications filed
- 1Conference paper
01 // career & education
Career & Education
Earlier experience
Mechanical-engineering high school diploma, hands-on electrical assembly and soldering, plus summer internships at M2 Railtech working on mechatronic prototypes, microcontrollers and PCB design.
02 // skills
What I work with
I design test rigs and fixtures, automate measurements, analyse data and turn failure findings into better mechatronic designs.
Software & Algorithms
Robotics software, from pose calculations to command interfaces and hardware integration.
Control & Simulation
Model-based design and state estimation, followed by testing on physical hardware.
Embedded Systems
Real-time control loops on microcontrollers, close to the sensors and actuators.
State Estimation
Fusing noisy sensors into states a controller can rely on.
Robotics & Integration
Connecting models, command interfaces and physical mechanisms.
Hardware & CAD
Building the prototypes myself, so the software has something to run on.
03 // personal projects
Personal Projects
Selected engineering work, ordered by robotics-control relevance rather than publication date. University coursework and personal interests are listed separately; confidential professional projects are not included.
Rotary Double Inverted Pendulum
A rotary double inverted pendulum with slip rings and CAN-connected sensors, built to swing up through all four equilibria with reinforcement learning and to explore MPC as an alternative.
View projectBalancing Robot
A 500 Hz STM32 balancing robot: LQR with pitch and wheel-encoder Kalman filters validated on hardware; PID/LQR controller comparison studied in simulation.
View projectPhantom robot - Bilateral Teleoperation Control
Bilateral force/position control with induced communication delay, time-domain passivity and adaptive inverse-dynamics control – MATLAB/Simulink simulation and hardware experiments at KAIST.
View projectDevelopment of a Mobile Hydraulic Lower Limb Exoskeleton
My TUM master's thesis: I redesigned and built a mobile, hydraulically actuated right-leg exoskeleton, implemented joint position control and tested tracking precision and hydraulic efficiency on the prototype.
View projectTwo-Axis Robotic Platform
A two-axis tracking prototype and simulation with detailed stepper-servo modelling, sensor fusion and delayed-measurement compensation.
View project6 DOF Robotic Arm
A fully 3D-printed six-axis robot arm inspired by the ABB IRB 1100 – stepper drives, numerical inverse kinematics, a teach-in GUI and a separate ROS 2 command publisher.
View project3D Printed Drone
A custom STM32 quadrotor controller: IMU-to-PWM embedded control, plus a separate MATLAB study of PID, LQR, constrained MPC and aided navigation EKF.
View projecttiny vario
A 16 × 16 × 13 mm, 5.51 g flight instrument: custom four-layer PCB, STM32 firmware and a barometer/IMU estimator turn vertical movement into audible climb cues.
View projectVariometer
A paragliding variometer built from scratch around an ESP8266, with GPS, barometer, accelerometer and Kalman-filter sensor fusion.
View projectActuator for Torque and Position Control
A custom robot actuator designed to measure torque, position and velocity – the building block for a force-controlled 3-DOF robot.
View projectMicroDuck Reinforcement Learning
An upcoming build of the open-source MicroDuck biped, focused on learning reinforcement learning, locomotion training and the path from simulation to real hardware.
View project04 // publications & IP
Publications & Intellectual Property
Publications
S. Groß, L. Obwegs, J. Li, T. Spiegeler Castañeda, A. Ganguly, C. Piazza, and S. Haddadin, Transforming Tactile Interfaces: Tri-Axis Force Sensor for Sensory Signal Processing, work-in-progress contribution accepted at IEEE World Haptics 2023, Delft.
Intellectual Property
Stop Assist for power tools – data-driven automated stopping controller for assisting operators in driving screws. Patent filed (2025P00312EP); 50% contribution. This patent resulted in an industrialization project and customer acceptance tests.
Additional Hilti patent application filed; details withheld pending clearance.
05 // university coursework
University Course Projects
Selected hands-on projects completed as part of robotics and autonomous-systems courses.
Autonomous Ball Collection Robot
A ROS-based differential-drive robot that mapped an unknown environment, found a visual goal, collected a magnetic red ball and delivered it autonomously.
Vision-Based Autonomous Drone
A simulated autonomous drone that used its camera to map a Unity environment and navigate to a goal through a ROS perception, planning and control pipeline.
06 // personal interests
Outside the Lab
Climbing in the Dolomites
In 2023, Lucas and I opened Via Eureka: an eight-pitch route on Lagazuoi. Climbing is a personal interest, separate from my engineering work.
Explore Via Eureka Climbing log & personal goals