DESIGN OF SMALL AUTOMATION WORK CELL SYSTEMDEMONSTRATIONS

摘要

The introduction of automation systems into many of the facilities dealing with thernproduction, use and disposition of nuclear materials has been an ongoing objective. Manyrnprevious attempts have been made, using a variety of monolithic and, in some cases, modularrntechnologies. Many of these attempts were less than successful, owing to the difficulty of thernproblem, the lack of maturity of the technology, and over optimism about the capabilities of arnparticular system. Consequently, it is not surprising that suggestions that automation can reducernworker Occupational Radiation Exposure (ORE) levels are often met with skepticism andrncaution. The development of effective demonstrations of these technologies is of vitalrnimportance if automation is to become an acceptable option for nuclear material processingrnenvironments.rnThe University of Texas Robotics Research Group (UTRRG) has been pursuing therndevelopment of technologies to support modular small automation systems (each of less than 5rndegrees-of-freedom) and the design of those systems for more than two decades. Properlyrndesigned and implemented, these technologies have a potential to reduce the worker ORErnassociated with work in nuclear materials processing facilities. Successful development ofrnsystems for these applications requires the development of technologies that meet thernrequirements of the applications. These application requirements form a general set of rules thatrnapplicable technologies and approaches need to adhere to, but in and of themselves are generallyrninsufficient for the design of a specific automation system. For the design of an appropriaternsystem, the associated task specifications and relationships need to be defined. These taskrnspecifications also provide a means by which appropriate technology demonstrations can berndefined.rnBased on the requirements and specifications of the operations of the Advanced Recoveryrnand Integrated Extraction System (ARIES) pilot line at Los Alamos National Laboratoryrn(LANL), which are considered to be representative of nuclear material handling glove boxrnoperations, the UTRRG has developed three task demonstration concepts to evaluate modular