A Robot to Monitor Nuclear Facilities: Using Autonomous Radiation-Monitoring Assistance to Reduce Risk and Cost

Abstract

Nuclear facilities often require continuous mo nitoring to ensure there is no contamination of radioactive materials that might lead to safety or environmental issues. The current approach to radiological monitoring is to use human operators, which is both time consuming and cost in efficient. As with many repetitive, routine tasks, there are considerable opportunities for the process to be improved using autonomous robotic systems. This article describes the design and development of an autonomous, groundbased radiologicalmonitoring robot, Continuous Autonomous RadiationMonitoring Assistance (CARMA), and how, when it was deployed in an active area at the U.K. 's Sellafield nuclear site, it detected and located a fixed a source embedded into the floor. This deployment was the first time that a fully autonomous robot had ever been deployed at Sellafield, the largest nuclear site in Europe. Expanding Efforts in an Increasingly Important FieldMonitoring nuclear facilities and rapidly identifying any spread of radiological materials is of global concern.

An Integrated Strategy for Autonomous Exploration of Spatial Processes in Unknown Environments

“…Autonomous robots are well suited for gathering information in hostile or hardly accessible environments. For instance, they can be used to map radiation or gas concentration levels in NBC hazards [1,2], temperature and/or humidity fields, etc. If the environment is partially or fully unknown, a robot needs to explore and build a 2D/3D obstacle map to ensure that the whole environment is covered.…”

Degradation Measurement of Kinect Sensor Under Fast Neutron Beamline

“…The aim of this work is to characterize the radiation induced degradation in depth images as a function of exposure time. The depth sensor chosen for irradiation is Microsoft Kinect which has been used previously by robots for radiation facility exploration [1].…”

“…The precarious characteristics of these facilities are presence of radioactive elements and often also extreme temperature. In order to overcome the challenges, robots have been deployed for exploration and inspections [1]. The depth sensor was used by the robot as an eye to perceive and construct a 2D indoor map of the nuclear facility.…”

Limitations of wireless power transfer technologies for mobile robots

“…This has seen the development of various kinds of mobile robots at an unprecedented pace for operations in air, land, and water. Applications for such robots include oil and gas refinery inspection [1], underwater mapping [2,3], radiation mapping [4,5], and nuclear decommissioning [6,7].…”

“…(a) Husky[8], (b) ANYmal[1], (c) CARMA 2[6], (d) Corin[13], (e) Phantom Pro 4, (f) Matrice 600 Pro, (g) AVEXIS[2], (h) BlueROV.1 https://www.dji.com/uk/phantom-4-pro/info#downloads.2 https://www.dji.com/uk/matrice600-pro/info#specs.…”