Dr Bruno Vilhena Adorno, University of Manchester

Nuclear decommissioning activities cost around £3 billion annually, with a total estimated clean-up cost across the UK of between £99 billion and £232 billion over the next 120 years. While inspection robots could provide a solution, most facilities have not been designed to consider robots. In the real world, inspection robots must tackle cluttered environments with differing terrains; obstacles such as stairs, pipes, and cables; and unexpected challenges for their manipulators. Rubble and debris in deteriorated legacy facilities may even prevent wheeled robots from moving altogether.

Legged robots, such as quadrupeds equipped with robotic manipulators, have shown great promise for nuclear decommissioning activities. However, for the robot to successfully manipulate tools and physically interact with the environment, both its body and manipulator must coordinate. Furthermore, when those robots are operated remotely, the limited field of view might prevent the human operator from seeing obstacles and other physical constraints. Therefore, robots must have different degrees of autonomy to deal with those barriers without affecting the human operator's experience.

This research aims to address these challenges by developing ground-breaking techniques for high-level teleoperation of one or more leggedone or more-legged robots equipped with manipulators. They will be used for remote transportation, movement of bulky material, and dismantling pipework and vessels in areas that are difficult to access or involve navigating challenging terrain. This will enhance the ability to remotely extract nuclear waste, fuel, and sludge from legacy silos.