Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: nivek@cs.cmu.edu (Kevin Dowling)
Subject: Nuclear Environments (Was NASA...)
Message-ID: <C82MBs.KMI.2@cs.cmu.edu>
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Reply-To: nivek@cs.cmu.edu
Organization: Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
References: <m0q7rcINNkpk@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 00:21:26 GMT
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CMU's Robotics Institute has built several machines for high-rad nuclear environments and a number of companies have specialized in the nuke area.  Teleoperators hav been built since the early 60's to also work in these hot areas, although many of the early ones were cable-driven mechanical systems. Telerobotic systems have also been developed for these work environments.

CMU's Remote Reconnaisance Vehicle (RRV) and Remote Core Sampler (RCS) both entered the hot areas of the Three Mile Island. See:

Three Remote Systems for TMI-2 Basement Recovery by Whittaker, Bares and Champeny
Proceedings 33rd Conference on Remote Systems Technology 1985

The third vehicle, The CMU Remote Workhorse Vehicle (RWV) although built and
extensively tested never entered the hot areas for non-technical reasons.
It is currently being updated with new electronics for DOE projects 
involving abatement of hazardous materials in dangerous areas. It may
yet be buried in Idaho!

High-rad environments are tough but very doable - there are many products that
are now rad-hard and many ways to use existing products and make them operate in rad-hard environments. Mnay space-qualified components provide significant rad-hardening. Many issues of materials you can and can't use are vital to 
understand in the design of such machines. Issues of glass browning, CCD imager failure, organic hydraulic fluids breakdown etc are but a few examples.

The Soviets did build a large sarcophagus around the Chernobyl reactor but it is rapidly decaying under the huge rad dosage. Several robots did attempt to enter the area but communication and control were significant problems and several failures resulted. CMU was approached and a design effort for a Chernobyl machine was later stopped by the state department. However, this effort did lead to one of the spin-off companies: RedZone Robotics, which has built a number of manipulators and systems for nuke envi


ronments.

					nivek


---

aka: Kevin Dowling			Carnegie Mellon University
tel: (412) 268-8830			The Robotics Institute
adr: nivek@ri.cmu.edu			Pittsburgh, PA 15213


