CARMA: a ground-based, autonomous, radiation monitoring robotic platform

Introduction

The CARMA is a ground-based, autonomous, radiation monitoring robotic platform. CARMA improves the safety, reliability and cost-effectiveness of long-term repeated measurements in nuclear facilities, highlighting areas of Alpha contamination on the floor of your facilities. Utilising an on-board DP8 paddle and RadEye G10 gamma detector, a full radiological characterisation can be completed of any room or corridor, whilst the integrated 3D lidar and RGB-D cameras offer autonomous capability including obstacle avoidance, localisation and mapping.

CARMA is also capable of avoiding Alpha and Beta contamination at a customer-defined threshold, reducing the likelihood of spreading contamination throughout the environment.

CARMA aims to supplement the work completed by Health Physics surveyors, reducing the need of the workforce to complete large-scale surveys of floors in large buildings and warehouses for nuclear decommissioning facilities and new-build. This means health physics surveyors can be better utilised to analyse data and monitor safety critical areas that are not suited for autonomy.

Features

• External dimensions: 450mm x 500mm x 400 mm
• Weight: 25 Kg
• Payload size and shape: Dependent on customer need
• Communication interface: Encrypted Wi-Fi
• Run-time: Up to 4hrs
• Drive: 2 × DC motors: 100m 3D lidar, 2 x 3D cameras
• Built in sensors by default: Up to 1.0 m/s

R&D Case Study by Sellafield Ltd

Project

Robotics and Artificial Intelligence IRT.

Benefits

CARMA 2 frees up resource by autonomously carrying out standard floor monitoring overnight on a pre-planned path, providing information to health physics when their shift begins. It also reduces the time spent in active areas by operators.

Current Status

Work is ongoing for the CARMA 2 active demonstration in the EDS facility. It is expected that the CARMA 2 capability will be demonstrated in an active area and progress to BAU within the next financial year. If modifications are required after the demonstrations, the platform will be reworked to suit the needs of the plant to allow the continuous use of CARMA 2 going forwards.

Delivery Partners

ICE9 Robotics, The University of Manchester

The Continuous Autonomous Radiation-Monitoring Assistant 2 (CARMA 2) is a ground- based autonomous robotic platform that has the capability to characterise and monitor large areas of floor space for fixed or migrating contamination.

CARMA 2 uses a proven and robust ClearPath jackal as the base robot with a custom body that houses COTS sensors. The COTS sensors facilitate onboard 2D mapping, autonomous navigation and radiation measurement and the full system is CE marked. The platform is capable of autonomously navigating the accessible areas of a given floor space to ensure that the entire area is covered. Any areas of contamination are located, quantified, and recorded using associated software, that outputs location tagged radiation measurements both as raw data and as a radiation heatmap that is overlaid on the physical map. This enables us to gain an understanding of the environment, take action and / or monitor change over time. CARMA 2 can also be operated manually utilising a WiFi signal with live visual feeds to the operator via the LiDAR, cameras and radiation sensors. By performing standard floor monitoring, CARMA 2 frees up health physics resource to complete higher priority tasks. It also reduces the time spent in an active area for the nuclear operator by highlighting the areas that are required to be monitored.

The CARMA 2 demonstration in the Mixed Oxide Demonstration Facility (MDF) realised some of the required benefits, but the one-off deployment was insufficient to conclusively assess the platform's efficiencies and longer-term benefits. Therefore, the next step was to procure a CE marked CARMA 2 platform and undertake further trials to understand the system potential and evaluate how this equipment could become 'Business as Usual (BAU). The CARMA 2 deployment will be conducted in the Engineered Drum Store (EDS) to provide confidence that it can identify contamination in an area with known contamination hotspots. CARMA 2 will be trialled with both manual and autonomous driving during this demonstration phase to assess its full potential and benefits as a characterisation aid.