Blended Intelligence for Safe and Efficient Nuclear Sort & Segmentation

Veolia Nuclear Solutions' consortium brings together proven technologies and deep domain expertise from leading nuclear, agritech., space and artificial intelligence practitioners to meet the challenge of nuclear waste sort and segmentation. This project will deliver an demonstrator capable of validating key system performance parameters in an inactive environment.

Our system will use a tele-manipulator, analogous to a human's arms, that works together with advanced characterisation and tracking technologies to identify, classify, pick up, transfer, trace and package nuclear waste . Operation of the manipulator arms can be under the control of computer intelligence and operate autonomously, or for more complex grabs and tangled wastes, call on the expertise of a skilled operator to take over the task. By sharing the task of the sorting and segmentation of highly heterogeneous wastes between human and computer intelligence, we aim to offer a step change in the safety and efficiency of the current process, only limited intervention by skilled operators will be needed for complex tasks.

Our modular approach is focused around building the right intelligence and decision making frameworks to decide how to manage and classify the waste, and the right waste manipulation capability to separate the waste and get it where it needs to go. Input sensors for characterisation, and configuration of the manipulator platform, are designed to be easily changed to suit the waste being sorted making the approach transferable across waste streams and sorting locations.

The technology enhances operator capability with autonomous operation whilst removing them from the hazardous environment. Efficiency scales as the number of manipulator units deployed per operator. Importantly this builds in flexibility for waste practitioners to determine the right mix of human/autonomous capability by stream and improve with time as the system and operators learn.

Leading the project is Veolia Nuclear Solutions UK (VNS), an expert in nuclear robotics and developer of DEXTERTM. VNS will be supported by the University of Lincoln providing automation and force guidance technology, Faculty providing the artificial intelligence for waste tracking, packing and physico-chemical characterisation, Createc a specialist in radiological detection equipment, and Mott Macdonald waste management consultants.