MallARD: An Autonomous Aquatic Surface Vehicle for Inspection and Monitoring of Wet Nuclear Storage Facilities
MallARD: An Autonomous Aquatic Surface Vehicle for Inspection and Monitoring of Wet Nuclear Storage Facilities
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DOI：
10.3390/robotics8020047
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发表时间：
2019-06
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
K. Groves;A. West;Konrad Gornicki;S. Watson;J. Carrasco;B. Lennox
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
K. Groves;A. West;Konrad Gornicki;S. Watson;J. Carrasco;B. Lennox
对乏燃料池或湿筒仓等湿核储存设施进行检查和监测的原因有很多，包括核安全和退役前储存设施的特点。到目前为止，此类任务一直由人员执行，如果对健康的风险太高，则可以避免执行。任务往往是重复的、耗时的和潜在的危险，这使得它们适合由自主机器人执行。以前的自动水面车辆(ASV)是为在自然室外环境中操作而设计的，缺乏在潮湿的核存储设施中操作所需的定位和跟踪精度。本文分析了水下航行器的环境条件和作业条件，选择了适用的定位技术，设计并建造了一种独特的水上自主航行器。所开发的ASV是完整的，使用LiDAR进行定位，并具有稳健的轨迹跟踪控制器。在一系列实验中，目前ASV的计划路径与实际路径之间的平均误差约为1厘米，比以前的ASV低了两个数量级。除了实验室测试，ASV还被用于两次部署，其中一次是在活跃的乏燃料池中。
Inspection and monitoring of wet nuclear storage facilities such as spent fuel pools or wet silos is performed for a variety of reasons, including nuclear security and characterisation of storage facilities prior to decommissioning. Until now such tasks have been performed by personnel or, if the risk to health is too high, avoided. Tasks are often repetitive, time-consuming and potentially dangerous, making them suited to being performed by an autonomous robot. Previous autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) have been designed for operation in natural outdoor environments and lack the localisation and tracking accuracy necessary for operation in a wet nuclear storage facility. In this paper the environmental and operational conditions are analysed, applicable localisation technologies selected and a unique aquatic autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) is designed and constructed. The ASV developed is holonomic, uses a LiDAR for localisation and features a robust trajectory tracking controller. In a series of experiments the mean error between the present ASV’s planned path and the actual path is approximately 1 cm, which is two orders of magnitude lower than previous ASVs. As well as lab testing, the ASV has been used in two deployments, one of which was in an active spent fuel pool.