Application of autonomous robotics to surveillance of waste storage containers for radioactive surface contamination
Frank J. Sweeney, Martin Beckerman, Philip L. Butler, J.P. Jones, David B. Reister · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1991
This paper describes a proof-of-principal demonstration performed with the HERMIES-III mobile robot to automate the inspection of waste storage drums for radioactive surface contamination and thereby reduce the human burden of operating a robot and worker exposure to potentially hazardous environments. Software and hardware for the demonstration were developed by a team consisting of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Universities of Florida, Michigan, Tennessee, and Texas. Robot navigation, machine vision, manipulator control, parallel processing and human-machine interface techniques developed by the team were demonstrated utilizing advanced computer architectures. The demonstration consists of over 100,000 lines of computer code executing on nine computers.