Tailor-made robot
Tailor-made robotKeywords:Robots, Pipes, Inspection
Engineers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington,custornised a robot crawler to fulfil a dangerous post-Cold War mission:inspecting an 800-foot-long drain line in a former plutonium separations plant on the Hanford site near Richland. This facility produced much of the plutonium the USA incorporated in nuclear weapons.
The Behctel Hanford Inc. personnel cleaning up the Hanford site for the Department of Energy are using the robot crawler to characterise the drain line in order to determine whether low-level radioactive waste at Hanford can be safely stored there. This involves inspecting the structural integrity of the drain line, taking radiation readings, and collecting samples of contamination that it contains, BHI is using the robot crawler to minimise worker exposure to the high radiation levels within the line.
The PNNL designers made the robot crawler four feet long, nine inches wide,and nine inches tall to fit within the 24-inch diameter drain line. The crawler weighs about 75 pounds, heavy enough to pull the 40-pound Zetec cord that powers and commands the device. The robot can climb on the sloping sides of the drain line to manoeuvre around vertical pipes that contain conductivity probes, which extend into the line. The engineers equipped the robot with a pointed ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene nose that extends about a foot in front to guide the robot around obstructions. Onboard instruments measure radiation levels and transmit the data in real time to human operators. In addition, a built-in video camera transmits images of the drain line interior.
