A trainlike vehicle for intervention missions inside nuclear plants

摘要

The Unite Robotique (part of the Direction of Advanced Technologies of Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique) has worked on nuclear robotics in the field of master/slave manipulators with their associated computer-aided teleoperation controls and mobile robots. The CENTAURE mobile robot is tracked (for stair climbing) and articulated (for obstacle crossing and turning on stair landings) with a mobile platform (for increasing stability), designed for inspection missions. For intervention missions, a vehicle is needed with larger payload capabilities (volume and mass) but with the same geometrical and environmental constraints. This paper deals with a new kind of trainlike vehicle designed for intervention missions inside nuclear facilities after an incident or accident. This idea was conceived in 1986 for the EUREKA program advanced mobile robot for civilian safety and is now entering a new phase with the TELEMAN program technology for advanced locomotion systems (in partnership with Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe for the locomotion and Cybernetix for the tests) with the building of a two-module linkage mockup and a locomotion mockup.