Development of testing method for arm mounted robot based on Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station cases

Yamada, Taichi ; Abe, Hiroyuki*; Kawabata, Kuniaki   

In emergency response and decommissioning at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS), remote controlled robot is required to work in harmful places instead of human workers. However, remote robot operation is not easy. In order to achieve a mission by remotely robot operation, the robot operator should understand what and how much he/she is capable to do by remote operation with the robot. Thus, a method for evaluation of robot capability is needed. Many of the missions by remote robot operation in FDNPS accomplish main objectives, while, few problems occurred in some missions. The experience from such problems in FDNPS have significant value for practical remote robot operation. The aim of this research is to develop a robot testing method based on cases of FDNPS remote operations with arm mounted robots. We survey FDNPS remote operations with arm mounted robots, and decide to develop a testing method to evaluate the robot capability for approaching a target object over an obstacle by a robot arm. We develop a test field for evaluation the capability and the test procedure to measure the metric to describe the capability using the test field. Moreover, we conduct actual tests and discussions with a team engaged in nuclear emergency response robot maintenance and training to make it more practical.