Emil T. Jonasson Jonathan Beouf Stephen Kyberd Robert Skilton
Just like most industrial or scientific installations, future fusion reactors will require more or less frequent maintenance. The expected environmental conditions, as well as the necessity of carrying out many maintenance tasks in parallel in result in remote robotic maintenance becoming a necessity in order to minimize the maintenance shutdown du…
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…
PreprintEmil T. Jonasson Luis Ramos Pinto Alberto Vale Robert Skilton
Sensor technologies will play a key role in the success of Remote Maintenance (RM) systems for future fusion reactors such as ITER and DEMO. Understanding their limitations and suitability for use in a fusion context is crucial to the operation and maintenance of these reactors. In this paper, we evaluate three key types of sensor which are of p…
Preprint PublishedS. Jimenez D. Bookless R. Nath W.J. Leong
In order to reach commercially-relevant availability future fusion power plants must have highly efficient maintenance systems. On the other hand, as radiation levels increase so too will the number of maintenance tasks that must be performed without human access. To meet these conflicting constraints remote maintenance systems must significantly…
Preprint PublishedR Skilton Y Gao
Present inspection techniques in place at the Joint European Torus (JET), as well as some of those planned for ITER make use of robotically deployed inspection systems, which typically collect data for offline analysis. This can be a slow, laborious process with subjective or error-prone results. There are significant benefits to be gained through …
Preprint PublishedE. Flynn P. Cooper O. Crofts A. Loving Z. Vizvary A. Wilde
DEMO is a key part of the EU fusion roadmap, where the programme is reaching the end of the pre-conceptual phase with a gate review in 2020. As part of the work to complete this phase, eight Key Design Integration Issues (KDII’s) have been identified as critical to the programme. Within KDII#1 (wall protection limiters) the feasibility of the Inn…
Preprint PublishedJing Na Jun Zhao Kaiqiang Zhang Yongfeng Lv
This article presents and practically validates an identifier-critic-based approximate dynamic programming (ADP) method to online address the optimal tracking control problem for nonlinear continuous-time unknown systems. The imposed assumption on precisely known system dynamics is obviated via a neural network (NN) identifier. A static contro…
Preprint PublishedSalvador Pacheco-Gutierrez Ipek Caliskanelli Robert Skilton
Remote handling systems are commonly used for decommissioning and maintenance of hazardous environments, specially in the nuclear sector. The necessity for a more realistic and accurate user interaction with the remote environment has led research towards the usage of immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality. In order for thi…
Preprint PublishedSamuel Jimenez Guy Burroughes
The extreme environmental conditions inside future nuclear fusion power plants will mean that maintenance activities must be performed without human access. Current teleoperation paradigms do not enable sufficiently fast maintenance cycles, and automation is seen as a potential solution. Transitioning to an automated maintenance scheme will requ…
PreprintRobert Skilton Guy Burroughes Matt Goodliffe
Future experimental scientific facilities, energy generation assets, and nuclear decommissioning facilities will require increasing levels of remote maintenance, which must be facilitated by robotic systems. Moreover, these long-lived (30+ years) maintenance systems will, themselves need to maintained and upgraded in order to deal with lifespan …
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