Joshua Blake Guy Burroughes Kaiqiang Zhang
This paper describes a novel automatic solution for toolchanging operations using dexterous teleoperated robots in a nuclear glovebox. This solution can identify and locate tools in the nuclear glovebox by visually tracking augmented reality (AR) tags online at a low computational cost. The solution is designed in a modular manner taking into ac…
PurchaseIpek Caliskanelli Matthew Goodliffe Craig Whiffin Michail Xymitoulias Edward Whittaker Swapnil Verma Robert Skilton
Maintenance and inspection systems for future fusion power plants (e.g., STEP and DEMO) are expected to require the integration of hundreds of systems from multiple suppliers, with lifetime expectancies of several decades, where requirements evolve over time and obsolescence management is required. There are significant challenges associated wit…
PreprintS. Pacheco-Gutierrez I. Caliskanelli R. Skilton
Nuclear power, conceived during the second world war as a mass destruction technology, has now become the primer technology aiming at low-carbon emission source of energy. Furthermore, the joining of the once divided West and East has led to a worldwide research ground that involves not only physics or chemistry but many other engineering fields…
PublishedAlessandro Altobelli Ozan Tokatli Robert Skilton
In the last decades, several approaches have been presented to accomplish tasks with a robot or autonomous systems in a glovebox, nevertheless, in nuclear facilities, risky operations are still executed by humans that guarantee a high manipulation capability and dexterity. Inside the gloveboxes, robotic devices have to operate in cluttered envir…
PreprintErwin Jose Lopez Pulgarin Ozan Tokatli Guy Burroughes Guido Herrmann
Tele-manipulation is indispensable for the nuclear industry, since teleoperated robots cancel the radiation hazard problem for the operator. However, the performance limitations of teleoperated robots for nuclear decommissioning tasks is not clearly answered in the literature. In this paper, we propose a task performance-based methodology to evalua…
Preprint PublishedLuigi Pangione Guy Burroughes Rob Skilton
For robotic systems involved in challenging environments it is crucial to be able to 2 identify faults as early as possible. In challenging environments it is not always possible to explore 3 all of the fault space, thus anomalous data can act as a broader surrogate, where a anomaly 4 may represent a fault or a predecessor to a fault. This paper…
Preprint PublishedOzan Tokatli Pragna Das Radhika Nath Luigi Pangione Alessandro Altobelli Guy Burroughes Robert Skilton
The nuclear industry has some of the most extreme environments in the world, with radiation levels and extremely harsh conditions restraining human access to many facilities. One method for enabling minimal human exposure to hazards under these conditions is through the use of gloveboxes which are sealed volumes with controlled access for perfor…
Preprint PublishedS. Pacheco-Gutierrez H. Niu I. Caliskanelli R. Skilton
In robotic teleoperation, the knowledge of the state of the remote environment in real-time is a paramount. Advances in the development of highly accurate 3D cameras able to provide high quality point clouds appear to be a feasible solution for generating live, up-to-date virtual environments. Unfortunately, the exceptional accuracy and high densit…
Preprint PublishedM. E. Sayed J. O. Roberts K. Donaldson S. T. Mahon F. Iqbal B. Li S. F. Aixela G. Mastorakis E. T. Jonasson M. P. Nemitz S. Bernardini A. A. Stokes
Operations in extreme and hostile environments such as offshore oil and gas, nuclear decommissioning, nuclear facilities maintenance, deep mining, space exploration, and subsea applications require the execution of sophisticated tasks. In nuclear environments, robotic systems have advanced significantly over the past years but still suffer from ta…
Preprint PublishedMarco Visca Arthur Bouton Roger Powell Yang Gao Saber Fallah
Driving energy consumption plays a major role in mobile robots navigating challenging environments, especially if they are left to operate unattended under limited on-board power. This paper reports on first results of an energy-aware path planner, which can provide estimates of the driving energy consumption and energy recovery of a robot traversi…
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