Toshiba’s dismantling robot :

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational selling electronic components, information technology, power systems or consumer electronic. In 2016, Toshiba is the third biggest world provider of semiconductor, behind Intel and Samsung.

After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 (more about Fukushima soon), the Japanese government began to look for adapted solutions in order to dismantle the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Fukushima disaster (source: philnews.ph )

One of the hardest task, in order to dismantle this nuclear plant, is removing the 566 fuel rods in the reactor n°3, which is a zone with very high concentrations of radioactivity. Knowing this, Toshiba developed a robot that can float on the surface of the water cooling pool and operate to remove the fuel rods:

Toshiba dismantling robot

This robot can use two robotic arms to collect and cut the remains to allow the third arm to take off all of the 566 fuel rods in the reactor n°3. This robot will be placed this year but it will be operational only in 2018.

More information (including a video): Toshiba invente un robot pour le démantèlement de Fukushima

Pushing robots

The purpose of this article is to explain the technical choices of the Cooperative robots project (the general article was posted on Wednesday, 23 November 2016 on this blog). According to the first article, the goal of this project was to make 5 sumo robots move together, in front of the main robot, the RICA.

To realize this project, we had at our disposal some specific material :

Firstly, the base of the robot was a Pololu Zumo robot. With this robot, all the parts needed for the locomotion (caterpillars, motors, power source and motor management) were ready to use.

To reach the goal of this project, one of the main challenges was to be able to detect the other robots. To do that, we could use three types of sensors, numeric infrared, analog infrared and analog ultrasonic.

For the detection of the other robots, most of us chose to use analog infrared sensors, because it is easy to use and provides distance informations. Some of us also use ultrasonic sensors to detect obstacles like walls

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The other aspect of the detection was to make the robot easy to detect by the others, so it was very important to work on the shape of the robot. We choose to build an outer shell with flat sides to make a good surface for sensors. This external shell was made with a 3D printer, because it was an easy way for us to build lightweight parts.  

Finally, to gather the information from sensors, execute the program and command motors, we used a microcontroller Arduino uno. In an upcoming article we’ll see the coding steps.

IVTV

    IVTV means Integration Verification Transition and Validation. It is a plan developed and validated during the design step (see picture below) in order to check if the design matches with customer requirements. All stakeholders can refer to this document to see if design models are aligned with the customer's vision and the forecast. This document is also a way to insure a good transmission between teams, activities and processes concerning system design and system realization.

To explain what represent IVTV we can go through each terms:

• Integration: the purpose is to prepare the system of interest (SOI) for final validation, transition and for production.
• Verification: the verification process aims to ensure that the system will be built accordingly with customer requirements and will be validated with an acceptable level of risk.
• Transition: the goal is to ensure that all subsystems can be implemented together or all the interfaces needs are taking into account and managed.
• Validation: the validation process aims to ensure that the system satisfies the customer and user needs as stated and agreed and ready to be qualified or exploited.

In the IVTV document you will find all these informations:

• Description of the project
• Relevant documentation
• Abbreviations
• Description of the context: perimeter, constraints, requirements, parameters of the system to be checked
• Strategy: general principles, actions for integration, verification, transition and validation and schedule of these actions
• Organization and responsibilities: description of the team, human resources involved, way of working between teams
• Tools and practical resources (building, warehouse, test bench…)
• Planning of the design and the production of the system

    It is key to start the IVTV plan as soon as possible. The more early you start the IVTV the more efficient it will be. It is also very important that it is made by other workers to have new points of view. Thanks to this plan we can prove that the design match with the customer requirements. We also minimize the risk of discrepancies between the product and its design.

A good IVTV is obtained after a lot of iterations. A good communication between the different design department and the verification team is also one of the key aspect to ensure an efficient IVTV.

Nuclear activities in France

    France started nuclear production in 1956 building the first nuclear reactor “Uranium Naturel Graphite Gaz” (or “UNGG”) in Marcoule.

    It was the beginning of the electronuclear program launched by “Electricité de France” the national provider of electricity in order to ensure a large electricity production.

    After the success of the first UNGG reactor, six reactors were built making electricity production of a unity grown from 70MW (Mega Watt) to 540MW.

    This electronuclear program leaded France as the second world producer of nuclear electricity, even if some major crisis likes the Tchernobyl explosion in 1986 has slowed down the development.

    In fact, France government and E.D.F. had to think about the next generation of nuclear reactor in order to reduce the risk of major crisis, and ensure a bigger electricity production.

    Considering this, France and UE launched the EPR (European Pressured Reactor) between 1990 and 2000.

    The difficulty of this project leaded to important delays (first French reactor should work in 2018 instead of 2012 initially), and the cost is actually of 10.5 billion euros…

OUR FELLOW STUDENTS ARE NOW AWARD WINNERS

On December 14th of 2016 was held the fourth edition of the Dismantling Conferences. There, around 250 professionals discussed the future of the field.

During the morning, several conferences were held. It was the opportunity for guests to show their point of view and their ideas to improve dismantling in general. For example this year they made a round table discussion about the implementation of numeric technologies in the dismantling process and a second one about system engineering integration.

During the afternoon guests would meet other people thanks to a “speed dating-like” organization . Everybody could meet other professionals and make a kind of benchmark. It is an unique opportunity to see what other parties are doing and what their views are for the future of dismantling.

Three awards were given through the meeting. Three apprentices from our promotion are proud to received one. The goal of awarding a trophy to students is to encourage academic training and projects about the dismantling. It is the case of the RICA IV project and the Zumo Robot project we managed early 2016. It was a great opportunity to show to professionals of this field that Mechatronics are relevant and useful for their companies, it may be the start of great collaborations.

Our three award winning students : Philippe THUILLER, Maxime NAVES and Alexandre MONNY

SE architecture

System engineering use several tools but the most important are architectures.

During the first step of the design we create several architectures of each systems and subsystems. We work on this thanks to a software which allows us to link all aspects of the design (needs, requirements, functions, components...).

The two main architectures are the following:

- Functional architecture

The goal of this architecture is to link all functions of a system and specialy their input and output. So we can justify why each function is needed.  We also see the logic behind our system.

- Organic architecture

The goal of this architecture is to provide a global image of the system components. We can see all links between parts of the system and what their flows are. Thanks to this architecture it will be easier to choose the good component and to implement them together.

We make these kinds of architectures for all system and subsystem but also for the context of our system. It allows us to place our system of interest in its context and see with what it interacts.

So we obtain a complete draw of the system where everything is linked together following the rules below.

These architectures will create new needs and new requirements that are required by the system or forgotten by the customer.

A good architecture is obtained after several iterations to check if anything is forgotten and if everything is coherent and relevant. Then in order to be sure that everything is correct a "verification and validation" step is made by an other team. We will see this aspect of SE in a next article.

Thanks to these architectures we have a precise first design of the system and we can prove that all requirements of the customer are taken into account.

Cooperative robots

“We all do better when we work together. Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.”

― Bill Clinton

We will put aside the humanity for now but, the rest of this quote pictures well the subject of this article. As we said in an older post, blind cells are very old rooms. Since their construction, a lot of scientific experimentations took place here over the years. The result of this is that the ground of the cells are filled with a lot of garbage and contaminated dust.  Even for a tank robot it's hard to move in this kind of environment and it can also cause contamination.

So an important need is highlighted here and it is to clean the way before the dismantling robot RICA. Implementing this would avoid the potential surface contamination of the robot. It will improve the survival of  electrical components and simplify the clean-up process of the robot.

One solution to answer this need is to add some pushing robots that will have to push the objects out of RICA’s path. Those little robots will have to collaborate with each others to help the RICA to move properly in the cell.

Therefore the realisation of those little robots was a subproject of the big project RICA IV that our class has to realise. During our first year of formation we had to create the first prototype of those cooperative robots. This first prototype was an academic project to make us apply our knowledge in programming and automation.

The specifications asks that five robots must be used, they're disposed in before the RICA in a row like we can see hereunder.

The central robot has to control its position considering the RICA's, it has to stay before the RICA at a settled distance without losing the dismantling robot. Each of the four side robots is guided by the one who move before it, to their left for the robots located on the right and at their right for the ones located on the left. Each robot has to be able to work in any position of the row, so they have to work in different modes that can be switched easily.

The class was divided in 5 groups, each group had to create one robot, they had to work together and with the RICA.

Unfortunately we did finished this project with four robots instead of five because a group had Human Ressource problems. In the end all the four robots were working and were physically different, it illustrates the distinct points of view of each group.

The next step to improve those robots would be to set up a wireless communication between them and an artificial intelligence to get real autonomous robots that can organize each other without human help.

[soon : link to video of robots working together]

[soon : link to robots’ realization]