DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A ROBOTIC SYSTEM FOR RADIATION DETECTION AND MEASUREMENT

Abstract

Generally, nuclear radiation installations require continual radiation surveys to confirm that there is no radioactive pollution or excess radiation dose levels that might lead to radiation safety concern. The present practice for regular radiation/contamination survey works is to utilize human operators, which is both cost inefficient as well as radiation risks. As with many repetitive, regular jobs, there are enough opportunities for the radiation safety issues to be improved using autonomous commercial or in-house design robotic systems. In this study, a prototype of a portable robotic system based on wireless communication protocol has been proposed for radiation detection in nuclear environment. The main motive of the robotic system is to help the human operators from getting unavoidable excess radiation levels. The robotic system consists of a ground 4 wheels carrier, GM counter based ionizing radiation detection box, Raspberry Pi- mini-computer unit, Pi camera unit &web platform based wireless controlling and recording system. In this system, the robot is regulated from a web based server in order to move towards a desired position to locate the radioactive source along with dose measurement. Radiation dose levels from some point radioactive sources (e.g. 137Cs, 60Co, 54Mn) placed at various locations in the nuclear radiation facility, have been monitored and compared with a commercial GM dose rate counter (Gamma Scout, w/ALERT model). The percentage of error has been found varying from 0 to 14% based on the experimental data. It is concluded that in-house design portable robotic systems are worthy for ionizing radiation detection and radioactive lost source identification in lieu of occupational radiation workers in the nuclear installations.