Vega—A small, low cost, ground robot for nuclear decommissioning

Abstract

This paper presents the Vega robot, which is a small, low cost, potentially disposable ground robot designed for nuclear decommissioning. Vega has been developed specifically to support characterization and inspection operations, such as 2D and 3D mapping, radiation scans and sample retrieval. The design and construction methodology that was followed to develop the robot is described and its capabilities detailed. Vega was designed to provide flexibility, both in software and hardware, is controlled via tele‐operation, although it can be extended to semi and full autonomy, and can be used in either tethered or untethered configurations. A version of the tethered robot was designed for extreme radiation tolerance, utilizing relay electronics and removing active electronic systems. Vega can be outfitted with a multitude of sensors and actuators, including gamma spectrometers, alpha/beta radiation sensors, LiDARs and robotic arms. To demonstrate its flexibility, a 5 degree‐of‐freedom manipulator has been successfully integrated onto Vega, facilitating deployments where handling is required. To assess the tolerance of Vega to the levels of ionizing radiation that may be found in decommissioning environments, its individual components were irradiated, allowing estimates to be made of the length of time Vega would be able to continue to operate in nuclear environments. Vega has been successfully deployed in an active environment at the Dounreay nuclear site in the UK, deployed in nonactive environments at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, and demonstrated to many other organizations in the UK nuclear industry including Sellafield Ltd, with the goal of moving to active deployments in the future.

CARMA II: A ground vehicle for autonomous surveying of alpha, beta and gamma radiation

“…These robots have been developed and deployed for a variety of purposes, such as decommissioning (Marturi et al, 2017;Marques et al, 2021;Monk et al, 2021;West et al, 2021) and monitoring (Li et al, 2018;Groves et al, 2019;Anderson et al, 2020;Connor et al, 2020;White et al, 2020White et al, , 2021Abd Rahman et al, 2022a). A number of these systems have been trialled and evaluated in active nuclear facilities such as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan (Nagatani et al, 2013;Nancekievill et al, 2018) and the Dounreay site in the United Kingdom (Bird et al, 2022;Nancekievill et al, 2023). This research is focused specifically on autonomous ground based robots for radiation monitoring and the remainder of this section provides a brief review of the relevant literature.…”

“…Although the robot had rudimentary alpha radiation avoidance capabilities, the robot's mechanical design prevented it from being able to detect alpha contamination before the robot had driven over the contaminated area, which made the radiation avoidance system unsuitable for use in practical situations; this shortcoming was highlighted by the authors at the time. Contamination spread due to fine particulate powders similar to those in nuclear environments can be readily transported by wheels, tracks or feet, being very difficult to clean completely from robot parts, thereby rendering the platform itself partially contaminated (Bird et al, 2022).…”

Impacts on air dose rates after the Fukushima accident over the North Pacific from 19 March 2011 to 2 September 2015

“…Used to measure indoor and outdoor γ dose rates in major commerical building material distribution outlets [ 73 ]. Used in a small and low cost groundrobot for nuclear decommissioning detection [ 74 ]. RadEye GN+ is used in an exam paper in a robotics course [ 75 ].…”

MIRRAX: A Reconfigurable Robot for Limited Access Environments

“…hazardous environment, operating the robot with a tether provide a way of full retrieval of the robot in the event the robot is rendered inoperable due to radiation damage or unforseen circumstances [14]. Using modular reconfigurable robots introduces the possibility that damaged modules detached from the main body becomes irretrievable.…”