Hello,
I am a masters engineering student and my final year dissertation group project is the design, building and programming of a prototype robotics system for nuclear decommissioning. I have started video logging the entire process, links below. Hopefully this is of interest to some of you here, feel free to let me know what you think and I will try and answer any questions.
Episode 1 (Introduction): youtube.com/watch?v=_BQfcvlMrYM&t=268s
Episode 2: youtube.com/watch?v=Ay6TbCTzcb8
Will the robot need to be able to withstand radiation, and if so, how you would handle it?
Ideally the radiation levels would be acceptable I assume.
Do you plan to make a full size robot or proof of concept?
Yes and no, firstly the project is an academic exercise and so various cost and time constraints mean we are unable to actually radiation harden our electronics for example. However the system is designed so that the components are modular and so any electronics that are destroyed by ionization can be swapped out easily. A bigger problem for actually using our system in practice is that is isn’t air or water tight and the exterior has a lot of nooks and crannies, this means that it is impossible to clean and remove radioactive contaminants from. If we had more time then we could achieve a washable system but instead we have focused on more technical aspects of the problem (so we get better marks).
We plan to test the system with Cesium-137 sources which are strong enough to detect from a distance and potentially harmful. To the extent we will have to be registered as radiation workers. The system is designed to be deployed in a decommissioning environment where radiation levels are high, but not so high as to instantly or very rapidly fry the electronics (fukushima level high).
For some of the reasons explained above we are building a proof of concept however the size of a deployed system would not increase. The main change would be to make the system airtight, waterproof and easy to clean. You can see the approximate size quite well in the second episode. Although we are only building 2 robots as a proof of concept due to budget reasons the system is designed to run with at least 10 in order to relay communications and penetrate the lead robot deeper into the facility (walls are typically heavily shielded which makes remote communication difficult). The approximate cost of each robot if it was to be made cleanable and produced in a larger quantity is in the region of £1000.
