CARMA II: A ground vehicle for autonomous surveying of alpha, beta and gamma radiation

Frontiers in Robotics and AI

Robotics and AI

Matthew Nancekievill¹  Andrew West¹  Barry Lennox¹  Bahman Nouri Rahmat Abadi¹  Harriet Peel¹  Keir Groves¹  Ognjen Marjanovic¹  Christopher Ballard² 

[1] Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom;Sellafield Ltd., Carlisle, United Kingdom;

关键词: autonomous ground vehicle;    ROS;    radiation detection;    costmap;    state machine;    experimental;   

DOI  :  10.3389/frobt.2023.1137750

 received in 2023-01-04, accepted in 2023-03-13,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Surveying active nuclear facilities for spread of alpha and beta contamination is currently performed by human operators. However, a skills gap of qualified workers is emerging and is set to worsen in the near future due to under recruitment, retirement and increased demand. This paper presents an autonomous ground vehicle that can survey nuclear facilities for alpha, beta and gamma radiation and generate radiation heatmaps. New methods for preventing the robot from spreading radioactive contamination using a state-machine and radiation costmaps are introduced. This is the first robot that can detect alpha and beta contamination and autonomously re-plan around the contamination without the wheels passing over the contaminated area. Radiation avoidance functionality is proven experimentally to reduce alpha and beta contamination spread as well as gamma radiation dose to the robot. The robot’s survey area is defined using a custom designed, graphically controlled area coverage planner. It was concluded that the robot is highly suited to certain monotonous room scale radiation surveying tasks and therefore provides the opportunity for financial savings, to mitigate a future skills gap, and provision of radiation surveys that are more granular, accurate and repeatable than those currently performed by human operators.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Nouri Rahmat Abadi, West, Peel, Nancekievill, Ballard, Lennox, Marjanovic and Groves.