“The most valuable worker may soon be the one who doesn’t need to breathe.” This is the rationale underlying an interesting new partnership involving Oxford’s Robotics Institute and engineering firm AtkinsRéalis, namely, the increasing prevalence of robot operation in the dirtiest, darkest, and radiation-constrained regions of a nuclear power site.
The project is centered around autonomous inspection, site mapping, and manipulation within nuclear facilities, yet the more important aspect here is the engineering work that goes into building these robots. Oxford brings its experience in robotic development and autonomous technology; AtkinsRéalis adds its expertise in transitioning lab prototype technology into practical industrial equipment. Why is that important? Because one thing nuclear work has always been plagued with is the realization that the parts of sites which need to be precisely inspected and monitored are typically those which cannot be accessed.
What sets this current generation apart is that fact alone. While remote control has been utilized by nuclear plants for years, the difference is that robots of today have advanced capabilities of localization, updating of maps, interpretation of cluttered environment, and even operation using high-resolution virtual models of the site before going to the physical location. Digital twins mentioned in the article tie in neatly with the ongoing trend among decommissioning projects in which digital twins of facilities are created in order to make sure that dismantling is performed with minimal exposure while converting raw scans to useful information.
This becomes especially significant in light of the fact that we are moving beyond mere plant inspections and into actual decommissioning. Almost half of the 423 currently operating reactors are due to enter decommissioning process by 2050. Such massive scale demands automation at any point at which sensing, navigation, and remote manipulation are reliable enough. In that context, autonomous mobility stops being an experimental feature and turns into a productivity enhancement tool in environments which suffer from the delays imposed by radiation protection protocols and difficulties related to routing cables to multiple locations on-site.
There are field applications which show why there is interest from the part of the industry in these technologies. At Onkalo’s underground facility for storing spent fuel, located in Finland, a legged robot had been deployed for autonomous inspection of the area, performing visual monitoring and 3D reality capture in wet, dirty tunnels where human presence is not desirable. Oxford Robotics Institute’s own history of deploying robots to Sellafield site, which is referenced in the main article, is indicative in that regard: robots start out as surveying and data collection devices and then become maintenance equipment.
Another piece of equipment worth mentioning is communications technology. Recently, researchers from Japan have demonstrated a Wi-Fi receiver chip capable of withstanding 500 kilogray of radiation aiming to alleviate the problem with managing cables in extremely radiation-laden parts of the site. With that kind of electronics advancing, nuclear robotics becomes literally less restricted in terms of connectivity.
Manipulation technologies are evolving as well. Work done at academic level on 9 degrees-of-freedom nuclear decommissioning robot points out to the future of this kind of engineering redundant motion, adaptable route calculation, and machine intelligence required for non-routine manipulations. For Oxford’s and AtkinsRéalis’ team, this opens up an avenue far beyond inspecting nuclear sites. They will now be able to create nuclear workcells in which robots map, interpret, and manipulate the environment.