ROBOT DOGS GO WALKIES | ROBOTICS & DIGITAL


NDA estate, with the NDA co-funding the work at Dounreay to help deliver benefit from the innovation groupwide. The work at Dounreay complements and builds on the recent deployment of Spot at Sellafield. Earlier this year the robot canine was deployed into an active area at Sellafield for the first time to understand the benefits of using spot to inspect and clean active cells that would normally require workers to enter in air-fed protective suits. The safety benefits are clear, but the work can also be done faster as spot can work in these areas much longer than a human could. It has halved the predicted costs and significantly reduced the waste generated from protective gear, Sellafield says. Prior to spot deployment two operators would go in, needing up to seven other people and taking up to four hours to prepare for an hour’s work. Charlotte Brew, sub project manager, Sellafield Ltd


said: “We started with demonstrations of its potential and six months later, we’re using it to accelerate high hazard reduction. This work wasn’t meant to start happening until the late 2020s but identifying Spot like this has brought it forward. Just one robot dog is making a massive difference.” Melanie Brownridge, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority


technology and innovation director said: “This exciting technology is helping move our people away from harm, reducing our costs significantly and could help us deliver our mission years earlier than planned. We are also seeing the benefits across the NDA group as we share our experiences to overcome common challenges across multiple sites.”


Donkey on duty In a related development, Swiss company ANYbotics has been testing the performance of its four-legged ANYmal robot in Finland’s Onkalo underground used fuel repository near Olkiluoto. Researchers at the Swiss University of Technology (EHT) built the first four-legged robot in 2009 and ANYbotics was established to commercialise this technology in particular its “ANYmal” robot. Although generally referred to as a robot “dog”, the robot used in the Olkiluoto test was called “Donkey”. The test was jointly organised by the European Nuclear Energy Organisation (Euratom) and Finnish radioactive


waste management company Posiva Oy. Euratom and Posive are interested in the use of robots that can access places unsafe for human operators, for example for safeguards inspections in high-radiation states or toxic environments. The robot is also not dependent on working hours and so can be programmed to do undertake inspections at night. Moreover, a robot would also be available in an


emergency at shorter notice than the time needed to call an inspector. It can be equipped for various tasks with various devices, such as optical and thermal cameras, microphones, gas or radiation detectors. The Swiss robot uses laser sensors as well as cameras


to observe the environment and is able to identify its own location very accurately. By combining observation with spatial data (such as mapping or area scanning), the robot can plan its navigation route independently if necessary. ANYmal is designed for autonomous action in challenging environments and has previously been tested in mountainous terrain. However, Onkalo’s tunnels provided a unique framework to assess the robot’s capability. Using battery power, the robot walked through the


Onkalo tunnels for about 1.5 hours. The purpose was to test the distance it could travel in Onkalo-type conditions on a single charge and also to see whether there were parts of the terrain that presented obstacles to its progress. The route was first planned using the robot’s scanning and mapping functions. It progressed autonomously on the scanned route observed by the research team but was always available for remote control, for example in an emergency. Various security functions were programmed into the robot. For example, it circulated the obstacles on the route from a certain safe distance and stopped when someone entered its safety zone. ANYmal is 93cm long, 53cm wide and 89cm tall and weighs about 50kg. It is fully protected against moisture and dust. It has a walking speed of 1,3 metres per second and is able to cross a gap 30cm wide. It does not require light for autonomous action. Single robot dogs are already making a difference in


places like Sellafield and Onkalo, it’s easy to imagine that fleets – or packs – of them could transform decommissioning, waste management and a host of hazardous activities associated with nuclear energy. ■


Left: The robot used in the Olkiluoto test was called “Donkey”


www.neimagazine.com | October 2023 | 17


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