Sensor-driven, fault-tolerant control of a maintenance robot

A robot system has been designed to do routine maintenance tasks on the Sandia Pulsed Reactor (SPR). The use of this Remote Maintenance Robot (RMR) is expected to significantly reduce the occupational radiation exposure of the reactor operators. Reactor safety was a key issue in the design of the robot maintenance system. Using sensors to detect error conditions and intelligent control to recover from the errors, the RMR is capable of responding to error conditions without creating a hazard. This paper describes the design and implementation of a sensor-driven, fault-tolerant control for the RMR. Recovery from errors is not automatic; it does rely on operator assistance. However, a key feature of the error recovery procedure is that the operator is allowed to reenter the programmed operation after the error has been corrected. The recovery procedure guarantees that the moving components of the system will not collide with the reactor during recovery.