Haptic guided UAV for detection of radiation sources in outdoor environments

Factories of the Future

et al. 2019

Self Cite

Large scale factories such as steel, wood, construction, recycling plants and landfills involve the procurement of raw material which may include radiating parts, that must be monitored, because potentially dangerous for workers. Manufacturing operations are carried out in unstructured environments, where fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inspection is hardly applicable. In this work we report on the development of a haptic teleoperated UAV for localization of radiation sources in industrial plants. Radiation sources can be localized and identified thanks to a novel CZT-based custom gamma-ray detector integrated on the UAV, providing light, compact, spectroscopic, and low power operation. UAV operation with a human in the loop allows an expert operator to focus on selected candidate areas, thereby optimizing short flight mission in face of the constrained acquisition times required by nuclear inspection. To cope with the reduced situational awareness of the remote operator, force feedback is exploited as an additional sensory channel. The developed prototype has been demonstrated both in relevant and operational environments.

Section: Developed Technologies Methodologies and Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Haptic Teleoperation of UAV Equipped with Gamma-Ray Spectrometer for Detection and Identification of Radio-Active Materials in Industrial Plants

Factories of the Future

et al. 2019

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“…Moreover, the two teleoperation modes have been designed to map the limited workspace of the haptic device to an arbitrarily large UAV workspace. In the first teleoperation mode (

), position information read by the haptic interface (namely, the

coordinates of the tool point) is used to compute the horizontal heading direction of the UAV [ 10 , 11 ]. In particular, the current displacement

of the tool point of the haptic device with respect to its center is converted to a waypoint

for the UAV in world coordinates as follows:

where

is the current position of the UAV in the world reference frame,

is a constant and

is the rotation matrix from the haptic coordinate system H to the world reference frame W .…”

Section: Visuo-haptic Augmented Reality Interfacementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Quantitative data have been collected such as the task completion time and the error between the location of the radiating substance, estimated by the operator, with respect to its actual location taking advantage of a video camera mounted on the UAV. Experiments show that a teleoperation approach that supports switching between heading-based and position to position control modes increases the position detection accuracy of the radio-active material with respect to a pure heading-based control mode [ 10 , 11 ]. Usability experiments, performed in a simulated environment, are also reported.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of Nuclear Sources by UAV Teleoperation Using a Visuo-Haptic Augmented Reality Interface

et al. 2017

Sensors

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A visuo-haptic augmented reality (VHAR) interface is presented enabling an operator to teleoperate an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a custom CdZnTe-based spectroscopic gamma-ray detector in outdoor environments. The task is to localize nuclear radiation sources, whose location is unknown to the user, without the close exposure of the operator. The developed detector also enables identification of the localized nuclear sources. The aim of the VHAR interface is to increase the situation awareness of the operator. The user teleoperates the UAV using a 3DOF haptic device that provides an attractive force feedback around the location of the most intense detected radiation source. Moreover, a fixed camera on the ground observes the environment where the UAV is flying. A 3D augmented reality scene is displayed on a computer screen accessible to the operator. Multiple types of graphical overlays are shown, including sensor data acquired by the nuclear radiation detector, a virtual cursor that tracks the UAV and geographical information, such as buildings. Experiments performed in a real environment are reported using an intense nuclear source.

“…Masone et al [9] proposed a method for semi-autonomous UAV path specification and correction where a human operator modifies the shape of the path of the UAV, while an autonomous algorithm ensures obstacle avoidance and generates force feedback. All these approaches differ from the haptic teleoperation scheme proposed in [12], which is further developed and evaluated in this paper.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A haptic rendering algorithm generates an attractive basin around the location of the most intense detected radiation, thereby reducing operator workload and minimizing the risk of dangerous conditions like collisions or crash. We extend previous work [12] by evaluating the haptic teleoperation interface in comparison with experiments where radiation detection is performed using pure visual feedback on the screen of the ground station computer. These experiments have been performed by an expert operator, using a small UAV in outdoor flight tests where the goal was to detect simulated nuclear sources assumed to be hidden on the ground.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Evaluation of a haptic interface for UAV teleoperation in detection of radiation sources

2016 18th Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference (MELECON)

2016

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We describe a remotely-piloted aerial system (RPAS) designed for environmental monitoring and specifically equipped for detection of nuclear radiating substances or materials in outdoor environments. The RPAS comprises an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), a lightweight radiation detector mounted on a gimbal connected to the UAV and providing real-time radiation information, a suitable communication infrastructure, and an HMI system including a novel haptic-based teleoperation interface purposely designed for environmental monitoring. The haptic interface supplements the standard graphical and visual sensorial channels to improve the efficiency of the UAV exploration. Simulation tests as well as preliminary experiments with the RPAS have shown that the haptic component of the HMI interface reduces the mental load of the operator who drives the UAV.