Activities

We are excited to announce that the workshop has been accepted for Monday 19th May, 8.30 – 12.30. We plan to continue during lunch (12.30 – 14.00) for an interactive poster sessions to discussed proposed Grand Challenges in this area.

Organising Chairs

• Young Soo Park, Argonne National Laboratory, USA
• Eloise Matheson, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Switzerland
• Simon Watson, University of Manchester, UK
• Kuniaki Kawabata, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Japan

Panel Chairs

• Anamary Daniel, Inspection Experts Inc, USA
• Takashi Yoshimi, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan
• Robert Skilton, UK Atomic Energy Authority, UK
• James Kell, Amentum, UK

Publication Chair

• Fan Zhang, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

The last decade has seen significant progress in the development and use of robots in nuclear environments across fission, fusion, and big science facilities.  Whilst much of the early application focus was on decommissioning and disaster response in highly radioactive environments, this has shifted significantly to encompass day-to-day operations and maintenance in low-radiation areas.  Additionally, fusion energy presents a potentially game-changing solution to present climate and energy security challenges, yet has significant outstanding challenges that need solving including those related to robotic maintenance.  Despite these new opportunities, there are still barriers to the wider robotics community engaging with nuclear end-users.

This workshop is a Call to Action to the robotics community, presenting a Grand Challenges which act as focal points for fundamental robotics research.  These Grand Challenges have been developed by the global nuclear community specifically for the robotics research community to provide direction for the next 5 – 10 years of research, and we would like your feedback!  The workshop will also address how to remove barriers with respect to demonstrating research to the nuclear communities to open the application domain to the whole robotics community, through the use of mechanisms such as digital twins, demonstration environments and accessing real-world test facilities.

The IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robotics and Automation for Nuclear Facilities was set-up in 2012 following the Fukushima Daiichi incident to help build a robotics community that could support the nuclear fission decommissioning and disaster response activities both in Japan and globally.  This was very successful, and a strong community base of nuclear robotics researchers has been developed.  Several ICRA and IROS workshops have been run on the topics of nuclear robotics over the last decade with contributions from Japan, Korea, the USA, China, UK and Europe.

Over the last decade, the use of robotics in nuclear environments has grown significantly.  There is a significant community in the fusion application domain for both decommissioning of the JET fusion reactor in the UK and the development of new reactors in Europe, China and the USA.  Robotic systems have started to be used not just for decommissioning in the fission sector, but also for day-to-day operations and maintenance in operational plants.  Big Science projects, such as the LHC and future FCC hosted by CERN, as well as the European Spallation Source (ESS) also have unmet robotic inspection and maintenance needs.

Whilst there is a strong baseline nuclear robotics community, it is often perceived as being a specialist area which has significant barriers to entry.  This means that it is often difficult to attract new research ideas and talent from other domains.  To help overcome this problem, the Technical Committee has re-launched itself as the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robotics for Nuclear Environments with the stated ambition of breaking down barriers between the nuclear domains and the wider robotics research community.  The committee has global representation from the fission, fusion and big science domains on its board.

This workshop proposal is the first major event the revised TC will run in its ambition of widening participation and breaking down barriers to the nuclear domain.  The basis of the workshop will be the launch of a series of research Grand Challenges which are being developed specifically for the wider robotics research community by the global nuclear community under the leadership of the TC.  These challenges will act as a Call to Action for robotics researchers to develop and apply their research to the nuclear domain over the next 5 – 10 years.

Following the launch of the Grand Challenges, there will be a panel session with global experts on the topic of “Breaking Down Barriers to the Nuclear Domain” which will focus on how researchers can engage with nuclear end-users or make connections with Universities and Research Institutes who can facilitate this. There will be an open forum where researchers can talk to experts about the Grand Challenges and get more information about them.

• Young Soo Park, Argonne National Lab, USA
• Rob Skilton, UK Atomic Energy Authority, UK
• Eloise Matheson, CERN, Switzerland

• Simon Watson, The University of Manchester, UK and James Kell, Amentum, UK

• Yoshimi Takashi, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan
• Maurice Fallon, Oxford Robotics Institute, UK
• Jee Hwan Ryu, Korea Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
• Leonel Lagos, Florida International University, USA
• Anna Erickson, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Submit your paper + a link to your video here: Paper Portal

We solicit up to 2-4 page extended abstracts (excluding references and supplemental material). Submissions can include research and development and application cases of robotics technology for nuclear environments across fission, fusion, and big science. Submissions will be externally peer-reviewed by two experts and rated based on technical content, application usefulness, and their ability to positively contribute to the workshop. All accepted contributions will be presented in interactive poster sessions. A subset of accepted contributions will be featured in the workshop as 3-minute spotlight presentations.

The following list contains some areas of interest, but work in other related areas is also welcomed:  Robotics and Remote Systems for

•          Nuclear facility D&D and environmental remediation and monitoring
•          Nuclear material handling
•          Nuclear facility/plant maintenance and operations
•          Nuclear waste spent fuel handling
•          Commercial power reactors –  SMR refueling, spent fuel management
•          Nuclear emergency response
•          Fusion plant
•          Big science – Synchrotron, etc.
•          Artificial intelligence
•          Telerobotics
•          Digital Twin

We accept submissions in the official IEEE templates (LaTeX and Word) and encourage papers with video as supplementary content. Please put a link to your video in the abstract box during the submission on the portal.

Reviews will be single-blind.

Four best poster awards for the best-extended abstract will reflect both the quality of the document, as well as the quality of the presentation and the poster interaction.

17th May 2024 09:00 – 17:00, Yokohama, Japan

Presenters and Attendees at the ICRA ’24 Workshop