Development of a Robot for Decontamination of High Places and Decommissioning Work That Can Cope with Slopes and Steps

• Published in: Electronics (Basel) Vol. 12; no. 11; p. 2403
• Main Authors: Ogake, Shuichiro, Yoshimura, Yu, Inoue, Koki, Kobayashi, Shu, Kobayashi, Kazuma, Mitsui, Satoshi, Satake, Toshifumi, Igo, Naoki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 25.05.2023
• Subjects: Competition; Decommissioning; Decontamination; Design; Design and construction; Electricity distribution; Energy consumption; Four wheel drive; Methods; Nuclear facilities; Nuclear power plants; Nuclear reactors; Orbits; Problem solving; Radiation; Radioactive decontamination; Robots; Rotation; Slopes; Undercarriages; Japan
• ISSN: 2079-9292; 2079-9292
• DOI: 10.3390/electronics12112403

In this study, a robot was created to compete in the “7th Decommissioning Creative Robot Contest. The “Decommissioning Creative Robot Contest” is a robot contest in which the fields and tasks are set based on the assumption of decommissioning work at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The theme of this year’s competition is 3D decontamination of a highly contaminated area inside a nuclear reactor building. To solve the competition problem, we propose a robot for decommissioning work equipped with “an undercarriage mechanism that can cope with slopes and steps”, “a decontamination mechanism with two types of rotation trajectories”, and “a lifting mechanism with a high deformation rate. The undercarriage mechanism uses a four-wheel drive with infinite orbit to cope with slopes and steps. The decontamination mechanism uses two different types of orbits for decontamination: a circular rotating orbit and a longitudinal rotating orbit for rotation. For the lifting mechanism, three pantograph mechanisms were used. This study realized a control and mechanism to overcome steps and slopes, a deployment mechanism to high places, and a mechanism with two types of orbits to carefully decontaminate a large area.