OC Robotics provides snake-arm robot demonstration for Sellafield Ltd

Citation

(2012), "OC Robotics provides snake-arm robot demonstration for Sellafield Ltd", Industrial Robot, Vol. 39 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2012.04939aaa.005

OC Robotics provides snake-arm robot demonstration for Sellafield Ltd

Article Type: News From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 39, Issue 1

A generic remote handling toolkit for nuclear decommissioning

Sellafield Ltd has funded OC Robotics (Bristol, UK) to demonstrate snake-arm robots conducting a variety of tasks within confined spaces. The tasks included inspection, handling, swabbing, sampling and water jetting. These are all tasks conducted as part of the characterisation phase of a decommissioning project. The tasks were completed within a purpose-built mock-up representing a Sellafield cell.

One key advantage of a snake-arm is that the drive system (called the actuator pack) remains outside the radioactive area. The snake-arm itself has a lightweight, robust, radiation tolerant design and can be used in both wet and dry environments. Two snake-arms were used, both 2.5 m long and 100 mm diameter. One was equipped for water jetting only. The other included a wrist and gripper. Exchanging arms took less than 15 min. The arms we deployed through both horizontal and vertical penetrations with a 45 min changeover time.

Phil Reeve, Head of Technology and Strategy for Decommissioning at Sellafield, said: “The successful demonstrations show that OC Robotics has developed a unique capability which should provide a real benefit to Sellafield’s future decommissioning activities. One of our strategic objectives is to develop a toolkit which can be deployed in a safe and cost effective manner across a range of tasks including dry and wet, storage and processing facilities. We look forward to working with OC Robotics and our established supply chain to deliver this capability.”

Images and video are available at: www.ocrobotics.com