Lessons learned: Symbiotic autonomous robot ecosystem for nuclear environments

Abstract

Nuclear facilities have a regulatory requirement to measure radiation levels within Post Operational Clean Out (POCO) around nuclear facilities each year, resulting in a trend towards robotic deployments to gain an improved understanding during nuclear decommissioning phases. The UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority supports the view that human‐in‐the‐loop (HITL) robotic deployments are a solution to improve procedures and reduce risks within radiation characterisation of nuclear sites. The authors present a novel implementation of a Cyber‐Physical System (CPS) deployed in an analogue nuclear environment, comprised of a multi‐robot (MR) team coordinated by a HITL operator through a digital twin interface. The development of the CPS created efficient partnerships across systems including robots, digital systems and human. This was presented as a multi‐staged mission within an inspection scenario for the heterogeneous Symbiotic Multi‐Robot Fleet (SMuRF). Symbiotic interactions were achieved across the SMuRF where robots utilised automated collaborative governance to work together, where a single robot would face challenges in full characterisation of radiation. Key contributions include the demonstration of symbiotic autonomy and query‐based learning of an autonomous mission supporting scalable autonomy and autonomy as a service. The coordination of the CPS was a success and displayed further challenges and improvements related to future MR fleets.

NeoSLAM: Long-Term SLAM Using Computational Models of the Brain

“…A Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) method allows a robot to continuously create a map of the environment and at the same time estimate its location based on this map [ 1 ]. Since robots can be applied sector-wide, it is important that robots can safely and accurately localize themselves with the environment to ensure efficient operation in challenging sectors, such as the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) sector [ 2 , 3 , 4 ], Nuclear sector [ 5 , 6 ], and Medical sector [ 7 ].…”

Multimodal immersive digital twin platform for cyber–physical robot fleets in nuclear environments

“…For example, the nuclear energy industry can benefit from implementing multirobot teams that can collaborate to complete tasks more quickly and efficiently than individual robots or human workers. This can reduce the time required for routine inspection, maintenance, and repair operations within the facility (Mitchell et al, 2023). Furthermore, heterogeneous robot fleets can broaden the scope of work as they have varying sizes, shapes, locomotion, and sensor capabilities and can be deployed in a single mission (Khamis et al, 2015).…”