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

Abstract

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.

The Italian Flagship Project: Factories of the Future

“…Finally, this very book represents a contribution to the dissemination of the whole flagship project. The following chapters will present in details the scientific and industrial results of the 18 research projects (see Tables 1.6 and 1.7) [84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101]. Grounding on the experience and results of the flagship project, the final two chapters of this book present an outlook on future manufacturing research by proposing missions aimed at fostering growth and innovation [102] and discussing research infrastructures and funding mechanisms [27].…”

Combining haptics and inertial motion capture to enhance remote control of a dual-arm robot

“…The reasons to remotely operate robotic systems are mainly safety, when due to dangerous tasks or manipulation of hazardous materials the user and the robot cannot share the same workspace [7][8][9], because of ergonomic issues [10,11] or when getting access to the working scenario is impossible or hard for the human operator [12,13]. Therefore, robot teleoperation can be useful, for instance, in situations where the robot is performing a task autonomously but the operator takes control of it, either to show the robot how to do it properly or to perform it manually [14].…”

“…Therefore, robot teleoperation can be useful, for instance, in situations where the robot is performing a task autonomously but the operator takes control of it, either to show the robot how to do it properly or to perform it manually [14]. Indeed, teleoperation has extensively been used in several applications such as: remote surgery [10], spacecraft manipulation and landing [12]; remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), specially drones [3,9,15] and underwater vehicles [13]; and remote control of industrial machinery, particularly in hazardous environments [7,8], among others.…”

Key Research Priorities for Factories of the Future—Part I: Missions

“…autonomous vehicles and advanced driver-assistance systems). Main challenges include the design and development of multi-sensor platforms and multi-sensor processing algorithms to be integrated on-board unmanned ground vehicles for tasks, such as multi-modal map building, situation awareness, and traversability estimation [63,64]. Alternative sensing modalities like radar, depth-sensors, and cameras sensing outside of the visible spectrum (e.g.…”

“…Human Computer Interaction (HCI) technologies will help humans to deal with complex mixed-reality systems full of autonomous agents [116]. Furthermore, HCI and haptic interfaces [64] will help IoA systems to properly interpret the intentions and actions of humans.…”