Reinforced Safety-Related Condition Awareness in a Motion Planning System for Remote Manipulators in Nuclear Decommissioning

Motion planning of remote manipulators is a challenging task in nuclear decommissioning practice. Operators have to consider different safety-related factors to plan safe motions in such critical applications. Novel motion planning systems assist operators in planning collision-free motions. However, there is no effective way to reinforce the operators' awareness of multiple safety-related conditions, which are beyond the considerations of standard motion planning requirements in other application fields. This paper presents a human-machine interaction approach that monitors safety-related conditions and reinforces operators' awareness, when potential risks likely emerge. Three functions, which reinforce the awareness of manipulator-environment clearance, radiation exposure, and system limits, are implemented to realize the proposed interaction approach and reduce operators' cognitive load. A pilot study was carried out using a motion planning system enhanced with the proposed approach. The effectiveness has been qualitatively verified through the pilot study