The mobile robot inspection system ARIES (Autonomous Robotic Inspection Experimental System), was developed for the Department of Energy (Contract FETC DE-AC21-92MC29115 via Task Order under the South Carolina Universities Research and Educational Foundation, or SCUREF) to assist human inspectors in the routine, regulated inspection of radioactive waste stored in drums. Waste generated at the Department of Energy's nuclear production facilities is stored in 55, 85, and 110 gallon drums. Tens of thousands of these drums are located throughout the DOE complex at facilities such as Fernald (OH), Los Alamos (NM), Oak Ridge (TN), Hanford (WA), and Idaho (ID). The steel drums are placed on pallets and stacked on top of one another, forming a column of drums ranging in heights of one to five drums. The columns of drums are aligned in rows forming an aisle approximately three feet wide. The inspection system makes decisions about the surface condition of the drums and maintains a database of information about each drum. ARIES will locate and identify each drum, characterize relevant surface features (such as paint blisters, dents, rusted areas, and tilting.), and update a database containing inspection information. ARIES was a collaborative team effort between SCUREF, Clemson University, University of South Carolina, and Cybermotion, Inc. The first phase of this three-phase project was a task-oriented, proof-of-principle phase in which demonstrations and reports were provided as the deliverables. The second phase was a technology integration effort to develop a single, commercializable prototype mobile robot capable of meeting the many demands of the mission of environmental compliance and clean-up of DOE sites. During the current Phase 3, ARIES was evaluated and demonstrated at Fernald's TS-4 drum storage facility. After the Fernald test, the ARIES project was extended so that the system could be tested at other DOE sites. The system was evaluated at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and at the IUOE test facility in Beaver, WV. The concepts upon which ARIES is based have been presented in a previous paper (Ref 1). This paper presents the results of the field trials and describes the second generation system that benefited from this knowledge.
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