TY - JOUR
T1 - Experimental evaluation and characterization of radioactive source effects on robot visual localization and mapping
AU - Lee, Elijah S.
AU - Loianno, Giuseppe
AU - Thakur, Dinesh
AU - Kumar, Vijay
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received September 10, 2019; accepted January 30, 2020. Date of publication February 21, 2020; date of current version February 7, 2020. This letter was recommended for publication by Associate Editor M. Kim and Editor Y. Choi upon evaluation of the reviewers’ comments. This work was supported by Qualcomm Research, University of Pennsylvania and New York University. (Corresponding author: Elijah S. Lee.) Elijah S. Lee, Dinesh Thakur, and Vijay Kumar are with GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.
PY - 2020/4
Y1 - 2020/4
N2 - Robots are ideally suited to performing simple tasks in dangerous environments. In this letter, we address the use of robots for inspection of nuclear reactors which may be contaminated by radiation. The geometry of a reactor vessel is three-dimensional with significant clutter. Accordingly, we propose the use of small-scale, flying robots that are able to localize themselves and autonomously navigate around obstacles. Because of the constraints on size, we rely on cameras which are the best low power and lightweight sensors. However, cameras perform poorly in the presence of radioactivity and the impact of radiation on robotics systems is not well understood. In this letter, we (a) analyze the effects of radioactive sources on camera sensors, affecting localization and mapping algorithms, (b) quantify these effects from a statistical viewpoint according to different source intensities; and (c) compare different solutions to mitigate these effects. Our analysis is supported and validated by experimental data collected on a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) camera sensor exposed to radioactive sources in a hot cell.
AB - Robots are ideally suited to performing simple tasks in dangerous environments. In this letter, we address the use of robots for inspection of nuclear reactors which may be contaminated by radiation. The geometry of a reactor vessel is three-dimensional with significant clutter. Accordingly, we propose the use of small-scale, flying robots that are able to localize themselves and autonomously navigate around obstacles. Because of the constraints on size, we rely on cameras which are the best low power and lightweight sensors. However, cameras perform poorly in the presence of radioactivity and the impact of radiation on robotics systems is not well understood. In this letter, we (a) analyze the effects of radioactive sources on camera sensors, affecting localization and mapping algorithms, (b) quantify these effects from a statistical viewpoint according to different source intensities; and (c) compare different solutions to mitigate these effects. Our analysis is supported and validated by experimental data collected on a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) camera sensor exposed to radioactive sources in a hot cell.
KW - Robotics in hazardous fields
KW - aerial systems
KW - applications
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U2 - 10.1109/LRA.2020.2975723
DO - 10.1109/LRA.2020.2975723
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85081742620
SN - 2377-3766
VL - 5
SP - 3259
EP - 3266
JO - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
JF - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
IS - 2
M1 - 9006942
ER -