Design considerations for teleoperation systems operating in gas-tight argon cells

In the nuclear industry, mechanical engineers spend a significant portion of their time designing equipment such as manipulators, bogies, mechanical grippers, and so on. Some customized designs can be considered as standard mechanical equipment in this area, although it is not unusual to find that an existing design cannot simply be copied from one project to another. Varied performance requirements can dictate that redesign, often quite extensive redesign, is required. However, if something similar has been done before, engineers could use that as a starting point for the new project. In this regard, this study presents several guidelines inspired by previous design knowledge for similar development cases. Moreover, this study presents more detailed suggestions such as design guidelines for an argon-based hot cell atmosphere and design experience for a large-scale practical hot cell facility. Design considerations and case studies dealt with in this study are dedicated to teleoperation manipulators that are used at a large-scale argon cell facility for pyroprocess integrated inactive demonstration (PRIDE), at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. In particular, for case studies to support the suggested recommendations, a fabricated telemanipulator system for PRIDE is introduced, and several kinds of experimental results associated with it are presented

ERGONOMIC ANALYSIS OF A TELEMANIPULATION TECHNIQUE FOR A PYROPROCESS DEMONSTRATION FACILITY

In this study, remote handling strategies for a large-scale argon cell facility were considered. The suggested strategies were evaluated by several types of field test. The teleoperation tasks were performed using a developed remote handling system, which enabled traveling over entire cell area using a bridge transport system. Each arm of the system had six DOFs (degrees of freedom), and the bridge transport system had four DOFs. However, despite the dexterous manipulators and redundant monitoring system, many operators, including professionals, experienced difficulties in operating the remote handling system. This was because of the lack of a strategy for handling the installed camera system, and the difficulty in recognizing the gripper pose, which might fall outside the FOV (field of vision) of the system during teleoperation. Hence, in this paper, several considerations for the remote handling tasks performed in the target facility were discussed, and the tasks were analyzed based on ergonomic factors such as the workload. Toward the development of a successful operation strategy, several ergonomic issues, such as active/passive view of the remote handling system, eye/hand alignment, and FOV were considered. Furthermore, using the method for classifying remote handling tasks, several unit tasks were defined and evaluated