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Robots in Radioactive Environments Seminar 2004
Robots in Radioactive Environments Seminar 2004
ABSTRACT
Robots were developed to reduce the human work and increase the precision
of work. Now, this can be applied to radioactive environment encountered in
nuclear power plants. As human safety is of primary importance, so robots are
taking over from human beings in radioactive environment.
Now different types of telerobots are used in the nuclear power plants which
can access anywhere in the nuclear power plants, thus reducing human exposure.
Apart from the high initial cost, it is cheaper than using professional workers in
long run.
The future of robots used in radioactive environment is expected to reach a
phase where the nuclear power plants can be made devoid of human beings. This
would be possible only with the arrival of completely automatic fractal robots.
CONTENTS
CHAPTERS PAGE NO
1. INTRODUCTION 1
2. BRIEF HISTORY 2
3. BASIC COMPONENTS OF A ROBOT 3
3.1. MANIPULATOR 3
3.2. END EFFECTOR 4
3.3. POWER SUPPLY 4
3.4. CONTROLLER 4
4. NEED FOR ROBOTS IN RADIOACTIVE 6
ENVIRONMENT
5. TYPICAL NUCLEAR TELEROBOTIC APPLICATIONS 7
IN PRESSURISED LIGHT WATER REACTORS
6. ROBOTS USED IN NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS 8
6.1. REMOTELY OPERATED SERVICE ARM 8
6.2. INSPECTION AND RETRIEVING VEHICLE 9
6.3. CLEANING AND RETRIEVING VEHICLE 9
6.4. TRON 9
6.5. ELECTRIC MASTER SLAVE MANIPULATOR 10
6.6. SNAKE LIKE ROBOTS 10
6.7. ARK 12
7. FUTURE USE OF ROBOTS IN RADIOACTIVE 15
ENVIRONMENT
7.1. CHARECTERISING AND LIMITING NUCLEAR 16
ACCIDENT
7.2. NEGOTIATING UNDEFINED TERRAIN USING 16
A TRUE MULTI-TERRAIN VEHICLE
7.3. REACTOR CORE MELT DOWN 17
7.4. POWER STATION DESIGN OF THE FUTURE 17
8. CONCLUSION 19
LIST OF FIGURES
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Robots are developed to be used in areas inaccessible to human beings.
Radio active environment is one in which high energy radiations like α, β and γ
radiations are emitted by radioactive materials. There is a limitation in case of the
time and dose for which professional worker can be exposed to nuclear radiations
according to international regulations so it very useful to use robots in such an
environment.
Robots with properly automated can also be used to control nuclear power
plants and hence can be used to avert nuclear power plant disasters like one that
occurred at Chernobyl. Robots can also be used for the disposal of radioactive
waste.
Future is still bright for robots in radio active environment as they are to be
used to isolate nuclear power plants from surroundings in case of a nuclear power
plant disaster.
CHAPTER 2
BRIEF HISTORY
The word robot was introduced in 1921 by the Czech play Wright Karel
Capek, in his play Rossum’s universal robots and is derived from the Czech word
“Robota”, meaning “forced labour”. The story concerns a brilliant scientist named
‘ROSSUM’ and his son, who developed a chemical substance similar to
protoplasm to manufacture robots. Their plan was that the robots would serve the
mankind obediently and do all physical labour. Finally, after improvements and
eliminating unnecessary parts, they develop a “perfect robot”, which eventually
goes out of control and attacks humans.
Although Capek introduced the word robot to the world, the term robotics
was coined by Isaac Asimov in his science fiction story “run around”, where he
portrayed robots not in negative manner but built with safety measures in mind to
assist human beings. Asimov established in his story three fundamental laws of
robots as follows:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human
being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where
such orders would conflict with the first law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not
conflict with the first and second laws. .
Robots were introduced into the industry in the early 1960’s. Robots originally
were in hazardous operations, such as handling toxics and radioactive materials
and loading & unloading hot work pieces from furnaces and handling them in
foundries.
CHAPTER 3
BASIC COMPONENTS OF A ROBOT
3.4 Controller
The controller is a communication and information processing device that
initiates, terminates and coordinates the motion and sequences of a robot. It
accepts the necessary inputs to the robots and provides the output drive signals to a
controlling motor or actuator to correspond with the robot movements and outside
world.
Controllers vary greatly in complexity and design. They have a great deal to
do with functional capabilities of a robot and therefore, the complexity of the tasks
that robots must be able to fulfil.
The heart of the controller is the computer and its solid state memory. In
many robot controllers, the computer includes a network of microprocessors.
The input and output section of a control system must provide a
communication interface between the robot controller computer and the following
parts:
Feed back sensors
Production sensors
Production machine tools
Teaching devices
Program storage devices
Other computer device hardware
Fig 3-2:
Block
Diagram
of a
Controller
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
When disasters like nuclear power plant explosions occur, power plant
personnel are often faced with a problem: how to find the reasons for nuclear
power plant explosions, so that future disasters can be avoided. The answer may
be robotic animals that can venture to hard to reach places that are inaccessible to
people.
Robotic researchers are looking more and more to mimic nature for the shapes and
functions of their mechanical creations. At North Carolina State University, when
students were challenged to come up with a robot that could crawl through pipes,
they looked to the animal world for a clue.
The idea came to Eddie Grant, director of the Center for Robotic and
Intelligent Machines and a visiting professor at NC State, when he spoke with a
major in the Marine Corps who had been called out to the Oklahoma City
bombing. Grant realized that a robot that could navigate pipes would be ideal in
this situation because pipes generally stay intact when the rest of a structure has
collapsed.
A tiny video camera and lights allow rescuers to see where MOCASIN II is
located. The robot can also be equipped with sensors that could pick up vibrations
from someone tapping on the pipes, or even "hear" voices and perhaps breathing.
Robots like MOCASIN II could eventually have other uses, as well. They could be
used for repairs in dangerous areas, such as nuclear power plant pipes, or to detect
cracks in sewer or water lines. They could used to rescue people from rubbles after
massive earthquakes. They could be even used in other planets.
While it may be a while before snake robots are used in space, rescuers on
this planet are likely to find such robots an invaluable tool.
There are many types of industrial operations and environments for which
mobile robots can be used to reduce human exposure hazards, or increase
productivity. Examples include inspection for spills, leaks, or other unusual events
in large industrial facilities, materials handling in computer integrated
manufacturing environments, and the carrying out of inspections, the cleaning up
of spills, or the carrying out of repairs in the radioactive areas of nuclear plants -
leading to increased safety by reducing the potential radioactive dose to workers.
task dependent, features are required. Most mobile robotic projects assume the
existence of a flat ground plane over which the robot is to navigate. In the
industrial environment this ground plane is generally flat, but regions of the floor
are marked with drainage ditches, pipes and other unexpected low lying obstacles
to movement. The ARK robot required sensors that can reliably detect such
obstacles.
The ARK robot's onboard sensor system consisted of sonar’s and one or
more ARK robotic heads and a floor anomaly detector (FAD). The head consists
of a colour camera and a spot laser range finder mounted on a pan-tilt unit. The
pan, tilt, camera zoom, camera focus and laser distance reading of the ARK
robotic head are computer controlled.
The ARK robot must navigate through its environment autonomously and
cannot rely on modifications to its environment such as the addition of radio
beacons, magnetic strips beneath the floors, or the use of visual symbols added to
the existing environment. In order to navigate within this environment the ARK
robot used naturally occurring objects as landmarks. The robot relied on vision as
its main sensor for global navigation, using a map of permanent structures in the
environment (walls, pillars) to plan its path. While following the planned path, the
robot locates known landmarks in its environment. Positions and salient
descriptions of the landmarks are known in advance and are stored in the map. The
robot uses the measured position of the detected landmarks to update its position
with respect to the map.
CHAPTER 7
It is the chemical or pressure explosion or both that rips the dome of the
reactor and destroys other parts of the installation. These kinds of explosions are
typical of explosions that have ripped through the installations in the past. There is
debris everywhere and terrain is generally undefined. A legged robot could
become trapped in the debris and so would small robots which are of little use
anyway once they reach their objectives. Large robots cannot enter the building
and tread its way through the maze of the machinery without creating further
damage.
If the installation is fitted with fractal robots, they can kick into action
seconds after an accident even if they are damaged because they are self repairing
machines. The first priority of the robots is to negotiate the rough terrain and
arrive at the accident scene. Operators are used to shuffle the bricking position
aided by computer software that calculates deformation algorithms and routes for
moving cubes to cope in undefined terrain.
The fractal robots squeeze through small holes by shuffling the bricks
around. They take with them cameras, lighting and any other special equipment
integrated into the cubes and which can squeeze through the available holes.
Under operator control, the fractal robots can then install lighting and cameras.
Dust suction equipment and/or hoses can be installed to filter out dust and fumes.
The robotic cubes can be used as structural supports to support collapsing ceilings.
Terrain that is not a problem for the robotic cubes which can transform into foot
units that allow the machine to support itself whilst negotiating hallways and
corridors. The possibility of malfunction of electronic systems is avoided using
lead shielding and using specialized robotic cubes that have no electronics and
have the equivalent of a mechanical computer inside it built out of relays.
Fractal robots can handle the worst case reactor core meltdown accident. If
the reactor is eating its way through the ground as happened in Chernobyl, we can
stop it. The problem with such a reactor is that in the molten state it is hot and
corrosive. The melt cannot be cooled with normal fluids as they can be vaporised
by the heat generated by radioactive molten core which will continue to generate
heat for days if not weeks. The molten core has to cool by the equivalent of a
nuclear coolant such as molten lead. By amalgamating the molten lead with
molten core, the nuclear reactions are shut down. Whatever the coolant used,
actions has to be taken immediately if the molten core is not to eat its way through
all the reactor building floors and seep into the ground from where it can be very
difficult to extract.
Fractal robots are competitive when the full nuclear power production cycle
is taken into account. This includes decommissioning work which is now
estimated to run into billions of dollars per installation. Fractal robots are also
competitive in the disposal of radio active wastes. It is not possible to simply take
tons of equipment and bury it somewhere with out due attention and care to the
possibilities of radioactive substances leeching into the environment over the
decades. Fractal robots can help in a number of ways to reduce the amount of
waste generated and to look after those wastes.
For example, if much of the low activity structure is made of fractal robot
compatible structures, then they can be recycled in other installations or even in
the current installations in more radioactive areas as they acquire higher and
higher dosages until they end up in the reactor room as reactor supports and lining.
Instead of commissioning more new installations which will then get
contaminated, the old structures from the old reactors are de-installed and reused
in the newer installations to acquire a higher dosage. Fractal robots give hundred
percent automation and thus there is no need for humans to go into reactor areas or
contaminated areas for any reasons for this type of reactor.
With the level of automation offered by fractal robots, when new reactors
are commissioned, the old structures that have been de-commissioned are retrieved
from storage and reused. This recycling minimizes creation of nuclear
contaminated wastes. De-commissioning can also be carried out using same
robots. De-commissioned robotic parts held in storage can be looked after by more
fractal robots patrolling, the waste site with sensors to look for leaks and leeching.
CHAPTER 8
CONCLUSION
But even after all these developments, complete automation still remains a
challenge. It’s believed that complete automation would be possible with the
development of fractal robots.
REFERENCES