This New Semi-Autonomous Robot Can Decommission Nuclear Reactors On Its Own

What Is It?

According to the recent news in the Robotics journal, there is a new kind of robot which works semi-autonomously and dismantles decommissioned nuclear reactors faster and safer.

Currently, the robots tasked with handling nuclear waste, like the one operating in the Fukushima reactor after tsunami destruction, need remote-controlling through each step. However, the new robot is described to be able to do the tasks itself, such as detecting and grabbing objects as well as cutting them apart in its video feed.

How Can This Technology Help Us?

While other semi-autonomous robots that are designed for mitigating nuclear disasters are able to navigate on their own, the newly created one can dismantle some obstacles appearing in this path, automatically. For example, human operators can guide the robot to not only pick up an object but also tear it apart with just four clicks on the mouse, as revealed in the press release.

Taylor also said that, based on the test results, this innovation brings about better outcomes than the current human-controlled robots. Basically, human operators still control the overall work of the robot, but with the help of some autonomous functions, the workload and time of the operation are reduced significantly.