Nuclear Environments Inspection with Micro Aerial Vehicles: Algorithms and Experiments

In this work, we address the estimation, planning, control and mapping problems to allow a small quadrotor to autonomously inspect the interior of hazardous damaged nuclear sites. These algorithms run onboard on a computationally limited CPU. We investigate the effect of varying illumination on the system performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fully autonomous system of this size and scale applied to inspect the interior of a full scale mock-up of a Primary Containment Vessel (PCV). The proposed solution opens up new ways to inspect nuclear reactors and to support nuclear decommissioning, which is well known to be a dangerous, long and tedious process. Experimental results with varying illumination conditions show the ability to navigate a full scale mock-up PCV pedestal and create a map of the environment, while concurrently avoiding obstacles.Comment: 10 pages, ISER 201

Development of an intelligent robotic additive manufacturing cell for the nuclear industry

Applications of Advanced manufacturing methods in the nuclear industry to ensure quality, security, process codes and standardisation are increasingly needed to ease adoption of new technologies. Many assemblies and decommissioning tasks are still heavily dependent on experienced human engineers and practitioners. Human error in production plays a large part in the development of standardisation to avoid defects and increase productivity. Risks to humans, previously considered as “part of the job” are no longer acceptable. Within European manufacturing, a greater problem exists; a dwindling skilled workforce capable of delivering high precision manufactured products. To address these issues this paper describes the motivation, design and implementation phases of the SERFOW (Smart Enabling Robotics driving Free Form Welding) project, which is an automated fusion-welding cell, linking future nuclear industry manufacturing requirements by mimicking human skill and technical experience combined with academic knowledge and UK based innovation. Development of key machine vision systems combined with novel robotic grasping technology and experienced welding engineers has made possible the construction of a potentially disruptive robotic manufacturing platform