Abstract :
Designed to decontaminate and dismantle aging nuclear facilities, Rosie is a construction-grade, remotely-operated worksystem capable of tearing a building down from the inside out. At the time of the Chernobyl accident, Soviet officials contacted researchers at Carnegie Mellon University about Rosie´s grandmother, the Workhorse, a multipurpose, remote worksystem for the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant. Although the system wasn´t ready for release, the Chernobyl incident inspired a group of CMU researchers to form RedZone Robotics, a company that develops remote technology for hazardous environments. Now, almost a decade later, RedZone has released the Workhorse´s progeny for its commercial debut
Keywords :
fission reactor decommissioning; fission reactors; mobile robots; nuclear engineering computing; radiation decontamination; telerobotics; Chernobyl accident; RedZone Robotics; Rosie; construction-grade remotely-operated worksystem; decommissioning; dismantling; remote technology; Accidents; Aging; Buildings; Contamination; Inductors; Manufacturing; Power generation; Robots; Testing; Wheels;