Digital twin-based Bilateral Teleautonomous System for Nuclear Remote Operation

The final goal has been incubated from the bottom line truth about the deployment telerobotic technology for real-world nuclear applications; even after half a century of innovation, there is no tangible telerobotic technology that is adequate for deployment for real-world nuclear applications such as decontamination and dismantling of nuclear facilities. Bilateral teleoperators and other sensor-based telerobotic systems are too complex and fragile, and unilateral teleoperators are too inefficient. What is needed to this end is a new telerobotic system that can utilize simple and robust slave hardware and yet perform dexterous manipulation via (potentially degraded) low-bandwidth communication. To this end, a new teleoperation method, namely 'digital twin-based tele-autonomy', which incorporates a digital replica of the world (i.e., digital twin) and local autonomy is proposed.
The overall research objective of this project is to implement a new teleoperation method, namely digital twin-based bilateral tele-autonomy, and demonstrate its applicability for civil nuclear applications. By integration of simulation in the digital twin and local autonomous behaviours, the performance goal is to achieve dexterous teleoperation with high precision and efficiency by extracting more performance from simple and robust robotic equipment.

This project has been outlined with achievable pathways to impact in mind from the outset. VR is a common thread through all this work and hence each collaboration is an impact route. In particular, this work aligns with the intentions of Robotics and AI in Nuclear hub (RAIN) to strengthen national networks (e.g. nuclear: NDA, SL, AWE, EDFE, UKAEA; non-nuclear RASSIG, UKRAS, Robotics Growth Partnership) and form new international collaborations. Existing projects include: ITER (EU, US, Russia, ROK, China, Japan India), F4E and EUROfusion, NDF and TEPCO (Japan). New collaborations include CEA, IIT, Tokyo Univ., UoTexas as well as KAERI which once developed will place RACE within a global robotics web.
RACE - This project will be one of more than 20 within RACE (robotics team is now >>130 making RACE one of the largest nuclear robotics labs globally) with more than 100 industrial partners and >10 universities. The research will also deliver societal impact through events and social media. RACE has more than 1000 visitors per annum and supports the UKAEA's engagement with schools visits (>>1000 pa), apprenticeships (growing to 80 pa with Oxford Advanced Skills opening in Sept 2019), graduate training (~10 in RACE alone).
MAN - The Robotics for Extreme Environment group at the University of Manchester has strong links with Nuclear Industry, where the project will have a direct impact. Results will be demonstrated at REEL (Cumbria) for Sellafield Ltd and National Nuclear Laboratory (NLL). However, we are carrying out projects with other industry sectors. The results in this project will be disseminated to other partners in manufacturing and health care.