Walking and climbing service robots for safety inspection of nuclear reactor pressure vessels

Abstract

Inspection and maintenance are essential in the nuclear industry. Failure to carry out proper maintenance could increase the chance of accidents which could result in severe casualties not only inside the nuclear plant but also in the nearby community. However, it is not easy to carry out such maintenance tasks since the environments are usually highly radioactive and unsafe for humans to work
in. The usual way of carrying out inspection and maintenance tasks in these hazardous environments is by using long-reach fixed base manipulators. However, these manipulators suffer from low payload capacity and relatively large end-point deflections. Also, the installation and the storage of these long manipulators could be costly. An alternative solution is to use walking-climbing robots, which overcome the problems encountered by the long-reach manipulators.
Over the years, a number of climbing robots have been developed for various applications [1-15]. However, most of these robots are only engineering prototypes and have not been used for any extensive inspection and maintenance operations. In this paper, we describe a number of teleoperated walking-climbing robots developed by the authors, which include
NERO series and SADIE series. These robots have been designed for remote inspection and maintenance applications, especially for the nuclear industry. All of these robots have been applied successfully in practical applications.

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