J. Davies H. Robinson W. Blyth A. Wagner J. Naish S. Bradnam R. Worral
The Active Cells Facility will be the world’s largest hot cell and will be used to process radioactive waste generated in the operation of the European Spallation Source. Several innovative technologies and approaches have been developed for the ESS Active Cells, drawing on advances made in remote handling techniques and technology from fusion re…
PreprintAlice Cryer Alfie Sargent Fumiaki Abe Paul Dominick Baniqued Ipek Caliskanelli Hasan Kivrak Hanlin Niu Salvador Pacheco-Gutierrez Alexandros Plianos Masaki Sakamoto Tomoki Sakaue Wataru Sato Shu Shirai Yoshimasa Sugawara Harun Tugal Myles Verdon Andika Yudha Robert Skilton
The maturation of Virtual Reality software introduces new avenues of nuclear decommissioning research. Digital Mockups are an emerging technology which provide a virtual representation of the environment, objects or processes, supporting the whole lifecycle of product development and operations. This paper provides a survey on currently available …
PreprintO.Crofts A.Loving M.Torrance S.Budden B.Drumm T.Tremethick D.Chauvin M.Siuko W.Brace V.Milushev M.Mittwollen T.Lehmann F.Rauscher G.Fischer P.Pagani Y.Wang C.Baars A.Vale
During the EU DEMO Pre-Concept Design Phase, the remote maintenance team developed maintenance strategies and systems to meet the evolving plant maintenance requirements. These were constrained by the proposed tokamak architecture and the challenging environments but considered a range of port layouts and handling system designs. The design‑d…
Preprint PublishedErwin 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 PublishedD. Butters E.T. Jonasson V. Pawar
Supervising and controlling remote robot systems currently requires many specialised operators to have knowledge of the internal state of the system in addition to the environment. For applications such as remote maintenance of future nuclear fusion reactors, the number of robots (and hence supervisors) required to maintain or decommission a fac…
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 PublishedS. Kirk K. Keogh
The maintenance and decommissioning of nuclear reactors requires the rapid cutting and welding of thick-walled pipework, to which laser processing is highly suited. However, the large size and stand-off of current laser heads precludes their use in space constrained areas and incorporation into in-bore processing tools. To address this, novel minia…
Preprint Published