A low-cost mockup to simulate robotic laser cutting in nuclear decommissioning
For nuclear decommissioning, this work provides a low-cost simulation platform that avoids calibration and handles geometric constraints, but the results are incremental.
This paper presents a low-cost mockup for simulating robotic laser cutting in nuclear decommissioning, achieving tracking accuracy of 2.4 mm (sd 1.3) when controlling the ultraviolet beam, despite an uncalibrated system.
This paper introduces a low-cost experimental mockup to simulate the laser cutting process of containers in nuclear decommissioning. It is composed of a three-axis table supporting a cuboid container with ultraviolet-sensitive faces, a six-degree-of-freedom serial manipulator holding an ultraviolet torch that simulates the laser, and a visual system based on cameras and fiducial markers. The system employs a constrained task-space adaptive motion controller that compensates for inaccurate parameters and eliminates the need to calibrate the system. Furthermore, as the motion controller explicitly accounts for geometric constraints, the robot reactively avoids collisions with obstacles while handling the ultraviolet torch. To enhance tracking of the laser-cutting path, we control the ultraviolet beam, which requires only four degrees of freedom, instead of the full end-effector pose. Experiments show that, despite an initially uncalibrated system, the overall system is capable of tracking different trajectories with an overall mean accuracy of 3.9 (sd 2.5) mm when the end-effector pose is controlled and 2.4 (sd 1.3) mm when the ultraviolet beam is controlled.