By: Dan Robitzski
June 14, 2019
Going In
A new semi-autonomous robot is capable of traveling into a decommissioned nuclear reactor and safely dismantling it, piece by piece.
Typically, the robots that handle nuclear waste, like the one sent into the Fukushima reactor after it was destroyed by a tsunami, need to be remote-controlled every step of the way. This new robot, described in research published in the journal Robotics, can handle some things on its own — like detecting, grabbing, and cutting apart objects in its video feed.
Robotic Assist
“The standard within nuclear decommissioning is for direct human-controlled remote tele-operation of robots, which is extremely difficult for the operators particularly given the complexity of nuclear decommissioning tasks,” James Taylor, the Lancaster University engineer behind the robot, said in a press release. “Fully autonomous solutions are unlikely to be deemed safe in the near future and so we have explored creating a semi-autonomous solution that sits between the two.”