Project Information

Project lead: Barrnon Limited

Collaborators: University of Edinburgh, Royal Holloway University of London, Ross Robotics Limited, RACE (part of UK Atomic Energy Authority), Tharsus Vision Limited, Jigsaw Structures Limited

Project type: Collaborative research and development

Total project cost: £5,997,917

Grant award: £4,669,475

Executive Summary

The problem

Hostile working environments present significant risk to the health and safety of any manual workers, high cost of deployment and significant timescales for completion.

Sectors

Nuclear Decommissioning, Oil and Gas, Mining and Space systems. Common to these environments is the extreme difficulty of effective deployment of the sophisticated kinds of equipment that replace human beings.

Challenges

Hazardous working environments requiring protective equipment and limited time windows for operation, Radioactive environments, Limited access through which to deploy the systems, Unstable legacy structures that prevent occupation, Lifting of heavy objects (~50kg) that require mechanical assistance.

The Connect-R team developed an industrial-scale self-building modular robotic solution to provide robotic access to work-sites in these hazardous environments.

The Connect-R project developed a robotic and artificial intelligence (RAI) system that removes humans from infrastructure inspection, maintenance and repair in extreme environments. Our innovative system provides structure in unstructured environments and represents a significant step towards making unmanned operation the standard approach in hazardous environments. The modular scaffold system enables heavy-engineering operations to be performed in situations that were previously inaccessible to robotic systems. By providing both structure, and infrastructure (power, hydraulics, vacuum extract etc.) the Connect-R system is capable of working safely, and efficiently, over long periods of time, and without human-maintenance - the system is capable of maintenance tasks on the modular structure.

What is the Value or Size of the Addressable Market?

Globally a large portion of the legacy nuclear infrastructure will undergo a major shift in focus. As generation and reprocessing ceases, the priority becomes decommissioning, waste management and site remediation. There are many opportunities to do things more safely, faster and at reduced cost.

There are numerous nuclear facilities in the UK, and Barrnon are currently gaining traction in the USA, Japanese and Canadian markets. Each has their own challenges, but the cost of extreme environment operations is significant. Connect-R provides a unique solution to assist the decommissioning of these hazardous facilities.

Project Plan / Progress

The Project culminated in a demonstration of the Connect-R building a structure. The Multitask Robot was able to climb on that structure, navigating the space in three dimensions. The Connect-R demonstration was able to showcase the various novel technologies that had been developed to enable the function of the Connect-R system. These technologies included micro hydraulic valves and architectures, genderless mechanical, data and hydraulic connections as well as demonstrations of the AI planning software allows control of the system.

The Connect-R project has led to more funding looking in more detail at the genderless connector technology. Barrnon and Jigsaw Structures aim to develop the connector to a higher TRL level and gain an understanding of the design rules around how the genderless fluid connection works in more detail.