A Novel Robotic Framework for Safe Inspection and Telemanipulation in Hazardous and Unstructured Environments

Intelligent robotic systems are becoming essential for space applications, industries, nuclear plants and for harsh environments in general, such as the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) particles accelerator complex and experiments. Robotics technology has huge potential benefits for people and its ultimate scope depends on the way this technology is used. In order to increase safety and machine availability, robots can perform repetitive, unplanned and dangerous tasks, which humans either prefer to avoid or are unable to carry out due to hazards, size constraints, or the extreme environments in which they take place. Nowadays, mechatronic systems use mature technologies that allow their robust and safe use, even in collaboration with human workers. Over the past years, the progress of robots has been based on the development of smart sensors, artificial intelligence and modular mechanical systems. Due to the multiple challenges that hazardous and unstructured environments have for the application of autonomous industrial systems, there is still a high demand for intelligent and teleoperation systems that give the control of a robot (slave) to a human operator via haptic input devices (master), as well as using human-supervised telerobotic control techniques. Modern techniques like simulation and virtual reality systems can facilitate the preparation of ad-hoc mechatronic tools and robotic intervention including recovery scenarios and failure mode analysis. The basic contribution of this thesis is the development of a novel robotic framework for autonomous inspections and supervised teleoperations in harsh environments. The proposed framework covers all aspects of a robotic intervention, from the specification and operator training, the choice of the robot and its material in accordance with possible radiological contamination risks, to the realization of the intervention, including procedures and recovery scenarios. In a second set of contributions, new methods for mutirobots maintenance operations are developed, including intervention preparation and best practices for remote handling and advanced tools. The third set of contributions is built on a novel multimodal user-friendly human-robot interface that allows operator training using virtual reality systems and technicians not expert in robot operation to perform inspection/maintenance tasks. In this thesis, we exploit a robotic system able to navigate autonomously and to inspect unknown environments in a safe way. A new real-time control system has been implemented in order to guarantee a fast response to environmental changes and adaptation to different type of scenarios the robot may find in a semi-structured and hazardous environment. The proposed new robotic control system has been integrated on different robots, tested and validated with several robotic interventions in the CERN hazardous particle accelerator complex.