YOLO Based Safety System for a Drill Press

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-30-2026

Department

Department of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Technology

Abstract

This work merges the physical and digital worlds through a YOLO-based safety system for a drill press, designed to facilitate safe coexistence between humans and machines. The proposed system mitigates two primary safety hazards associated with drill press operation: the sudden and forceful rotation of the workpiece due to drill bit binding, and the risk of hand or finger injury from contact with the rotating spindle, chuck, or drill bit. In this work, a RealSense D415 camera is used to capture images and obtain depth information. This work utilizes a YOLO-v11n segmentation model trained to recognize hands, workpiece hold-down clamps, the spindle/chuck, and various types of drill bits. The system logic first prompts the user to update the camera position and orientation if necessary, and then checks whether two hold-down clamps are visible. Once the system verifies the presence of the hold-down clamps, it begins to capture images to detect and locate the hands, the chuck, and the drill bit. Safety clearances are computed first using spherical approximations of the hands, chuck, and drill, as needed, and then using less conservative cylindrical approximations of the chuck and drill. If a user's hand is detected within a specified threshold distance of a rotating element, the 110 vac power to the drill press is cut off, and the user is prompted to turn the physical drill press switch off before resuming work. A serially connected TTL device is used to interrupt the power to the drill press via a solid-state relay. The proof-of-concept system performed well, with a frame-to-frame cycle time of 85 ms. This concept can be applied to many other potentially dangerous workshop tools, including table saws, band saws, compound miter saws, jointers, and routers.

Publication Title

2025 IEEE 4th International Conference on Intelligent Reality (ICIR)

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