Robots In Radio Active Environment

Name- Sankalp khattri Reg no- 11103933 Roll no- 38

Section- E2E28

Abstract
Robots are developed to be used in areas
inaccessible to human beings. Radio active
environment is one in which high energy
radiations like , and 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.
BRIEF HISTORY
The word robot was introduced in 1921 by
the Czech play Wright Karel Capek, in his
play Rossums 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 1960s. 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.

NEED FOR ROBOTS IN

RADIOACTIVE ENVIRONMENT

Radioactive
environment
is
mainly
encountered in nuclear power plants. Some
regular repair and maintenance activities at
nuclear power plants involve risks of
contamination and irradiation. While
contamination is an accidental and avoidable
phenomenon, irradiation is continuous and
effects the operators work areas. Various
countries have laws establishing annual
maximum doses to which professional
workers can be exposed and the maximum
time that they may stay inside areas subject
to radiation.
Most tasks at nuclear facilities are
carried out by in house maintenance
specialists. They are few in number and in
many cases, require several yeas of
experience and extensive training programs.
The number of hours that they can work
continuously is limited by national
international regulations regarding the
maximum dose that may be received by
exposed professional workers. Legal
regulations establish that when a worker
reaches a specific dose limit, the worker
cannot work in areas subject to radiation for
a given period of time. This increase the cost
of maintenance services because personal
only operate for short periods of time. Given
the discontinuous use of human resources
and discontinuous nature of work, nuclear
service companies are obliged to allow for
some uncertainties in scheduling of services
and in rationalization of their human
resources.
For all the above reasons, it is generally
advisable and in some cases mandatory, to
use telerobotics for the execution of repair
and maintenance tasks in nuclear power
plants. This is particularly true of tasks
entailing high exposure to radiation.

TYPICAL NUCLEAR TELEROBOTIC

APPLICATIONS IN PRESSURISED
LIGHT WATER (PWR) REACTORS
These are some of the typical surveillance
and maintenance operations in pwr units
where telerobotic systems can be applied.
1. Steam generator
Primary tube
inspection and
maintenance.
Channel
head
cleaning
and
decontamination.
Nozzle dam insertion.
Sludge lancing
Secondary side foreign object
removal.
Foreign object removal in the
primary circuit.
2. Reactor cavity
# Floor and wall area decontamination.
# Fuel transfer channel cleaning.
# Fuel transfer channel and underwater
inspection.
3. Reactor vessel
Underwater inspection and repair.
Foreign fallen object removal.
Lower internal inspection.
4. Reactor head vessel
Surface decontamination.
Head inspection.
5. Others
Internal pipe inspection and object
removal.
Underwater cleaning of various plant
tanks and vessels.

 Surface decontamination of general

floor areas.
Underwater inspection of equipment
and spent fuel pools.
Extraction and welding of the
pressurized heaters.

ROBOTS USED IN NUCLEAR POWER

PLANTS

Remotely operated service arm (ROSA)

Fig 6-1(a): ROSA

Radioactive environment in which robots

work is actually seen in nuclear power
plants. The tubes in steam generators are
subject to multiple stresses, such as
mechanical and thermal loading, vibrations
and various types of corrosion. Diagnostic
tests are therefore necessary to identify
points of degradation along the SG tubes
and define repair procedures for damaged
tubes. The SG maintenance jobs, which are
carried out during plant refuelling outages,
involve complex tasks (water cleaning,
nozzle
dam
insertion,
eddy-current
inspection, mechanical plugging and
unplugging etc) inside an environment made
hazardous
by
high
radiation
and
contamination. The frequency of inspection
and the number of inspected tubes increases
with the aging of the plant. So a telerobotic
system known as remotely operated service
arm is used to the use of jumpers that work
inside the SG channel head, thus lessens the
risk of contamination of human workers.
The system has proven its robustness and
flexibility for a wide range of maintenance
operations inside the SG channel head of
PWR SGS. The system provides a remote
user interface for controlling the joint six
axis arm. The arm is equipped with a remote
quick connector (RQC) to facilitate the
assembly and disassembly of such tools.

AUTONOMOUS ROBOT FOR KNOWN

ENVIRONMENT (ARK)
The ARK (Autonomous Robot for a Known
Environment) Project was a precompetitive
research project involving Ontario Hydro,
the University of Toronto, York University,
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., and the
National Research Council of Canada. The
project started in September 1991 and
completed in August 1995. The technical
objective of the project was to develop a
sensor-based mobile robot that could
autonomously navigate in a known
industrial environment.
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.

The industrial environment is significantly

different from office environments in which
most other mobile robots operate. The ARK
project produced a self-contained mobile
robot
with
sensor-based
navigation
capabilities specifically designed for
operation in a real industrial setting. The
ARK robot was evaluated in the large
engineering laboratory at AECL CANDU in
Mississauga, Ontario. This open area covers
approximately 50,000 sq. feet of space and
accommodates one hundred and fifty
employees. Within the Laboratory, there are
test rigs of various sizes, mockups of reactor
components, a machine shop, a fabrication
facility, a metrology lab and assembly area.
There are no major barriers between these
facilities and therefore at any one time there
may be up to fifty people working on the lab
floor, three fork lift trucks and floor cleaning
machines in operation. Such an environment
presents many difficulties that include: the
lack of vertical flat walls; large open spaces
(the main isle is 400' long) as well as small
cramped spaces; high ceilings (50'); large
windows near the ceiling resulting in time
dependent and weather dependent lighting
conditions, a large variation in light
intensity, also highlights and glare; many
temporary and semi-permanent structures;
many (some very large) metallic structures;
people and forklifts moving about; oil and
water spills on the floor; floor drains (which
could be uncovered); hoses and piping on
the floor; chains hanging down from above,
protruding structures, and other transient
obstacles to the safe motion of the robot.
Large distances, often encountered in the
industrial environment, require sensors that
can operate at such ranges. The number of
visual features (lines, corners and regions) is
very high and techniques for focusing
attention on specific, 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 sonars 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.

At its simplest a fractal robot is simply a

collection of computer controlled bricks that
reshape on command into different
structures in a matter of seconds. Its like
kids playing with Lego-instead we use a
computer and motorised bricks and do this
with total automation.

Fig 6-4(a): HUMANOID ROBOT

Fig 6-4(b): UNDERWATER

AUTONOMUS ROBOT

Fractal robots can limit an evolving nuclear

accidents as it occurs by sealing the roof top
of the building that have been blown and
leaking radiation dusts. Penetrating intense
radiation from nuclear accident can prevent
any kind of repair work from being
undertaken inside the building. This
penetrating nature of radiation requires that
all machinery be operated remotely.
Standard remote machinery such as robotic
rovers cannot operate in high radiation
environments, confined spaces or an
undefined terrain created by explosions that
simply rules out existing approaches. Fractal
robots on the other hand can overcome all
these difficulties systematically because it is
a true multi-terrain vehicle to get from
anywhere to anywhere across undefined
terrains.
Characterising and Limiting Nuclear
Accident

FUTURE USE OF ROBOTS IN

RADIOACTIVE ENVIRONMENT
Robots have to be used in handling nuclear
materials because of its toxic effects on life.
Nuclear accidents are the most difficult to
deal with at present and experience has
shown that humans can only run away from
nuclear accidents in the face of danger just
like a comical Neolithic ancestors running
away in the face of fire. Fractal robots
presented here explains in detail how best to
manage nuclear accidents.

A nuclear reactor that has been severely

damaged is never accessible directly for
servicing or repairs. The concrete reactor is
normally surrounded by installation specific
buildings that can make access difficult after
an accident. Access constrains make the task
of clearing up catastrophic reactor failure
near impossible using conventional systems.
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.
Negotiating Undefined Terrain Using a
True Multi-terrain Vehicle
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.

Reactor Core Melt Down

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.
Power Station Design of The Future
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 deinstalled 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. Decommissioned 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.

CONCLUSION
Over the years, several telerobotic systems
for periodic maintenance services and
unforeseen
interventions
have
been
developed. Most of the process that is
inaccessible to human has been automated.
Thanks to the design of reference software
architectures for teleoperated systems, it has
been possible to develop different
applications reusing existing components.
But even after all these developments,
complete automation still remains a
challenge. Its believed that complete
automation would be possible with the
development of fractal robots.

Refrences-

1. www.learnaboutrobots.com/nu
clear.htm
2. ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/100/28
103/01256294.pdf
3. www.researchgate.net/.../3344
668_Robots_in_radioactive_
environments
4. Editorial Special issue on field
and robotics
5. PDF on teleoperated cleaning
robots