Collaborative dual-arm continuum robot for operating in underwater environments

Abstract

In many industries worldwide, decommissioning is a significant and growing engineering challenge requiring specialist tools and robots. This is particularly the case in underwater or submerged nuclear sites, such as the stricken Fukushima Daiichi reactors. However, most currently available decommissioning tools are bulky structures lacking dexterity. In this paper, a novel dual-arm robot, composed of two 6-DoF continuum arms designed to work together, is developed with the intent to collect material samples from underwater environments.