Robotics in the nuclear Industry is application specific and differs vastly from industrial applications where humans are replaced for productivity, precession and efficient processes. The nuclear Industry requires robots that can complete a task of Inspection, assembly, disassembly or cleaning remotely on land and / or in contaminated water / sludge. These processes are normally in areas of low to high levels of radiation and normally not accessible. Human intervention has its limitations of man REM doses.

We understand that all nuclear plants will have its own limited space & operational constraints. This forces us to develop application specific robots. Once developed, some of these robots can be suitably modified for suite newer applications. Robots for inspection may carry a single camera or a host of application specific cameras along with sensors such as GM tubes, Photo multiplier tubes, scintillation sensors etc. Some systems carry application specific manipulators.

Designing & Developing robotic systems is what we at Zenn Systems are all about. There is a wide range of robotic systems designed, developed and delivered by us. Some of the application specific developments undertaken are:

RAD04 – HEPA Filters are physically monitored using standard instruments in the hands of health physicists. Random measurements of various filters determine if the entire filter bank needs replacement. Healthy usable filters too get replaced. Our HEPA filter room robot not only permits taking multiple point measurements of each and every filter but also keeps the health physicists physically away from the Filter room. The radiation data is logged to generate multiple reports.

MagBot – Pipe Inspection robot for decommissioning nuclear Installations. These little masters measure every sq millimeter of the hundreds of meters of pipes ranging in diameters from a few centimeters to more than a meter wide. They can measure the smallest levels of radiation using Scintillation sensors, photo multiplier tubes GM tubes or any other portable sensor interfaced to it.

This process of pre inspection can be carried out at the initial stages before cutting & removing the pipe line for further processing. Time and money are saved during decommissioning nuclear Installations. It can also be used for routine inspection of operating plants.

Cleanbot – Spent Fuel Storage Bay (SFSB) Cleaning Robot. This underwater robot cleans the SFSB of all the small disintegrated particles from the spent fuel. The system Cleans, collects, transfers and then fills the same into cans. All remotely. Even the brush can be replaced remotely without removing the robot from the SFSB.

Scrubot -Ferromagnetic surface Liquid Tank Inspection / Decontamination Robot, this robot works in liquid filled tanks & on dry surfaces. Its objective is to scrub the surface gently to reduce the contamination level on the walls. It also replaces the human operation of pressure washing a large liquid tank. When not scrubbing, sensors can be mounted for inspection.

CTR01 – All terrain robot, originally developed for Homeland security and defense use. It also finds importance in the nuclear industry. This robot is for surveillance and inspection of nuclear sites outdoors. It’s compact weighing in at just 20 Kgs, truly portable and deploys in less than 2 minutes including unpacking. It can carry a host of sensors & cameras. A larger version with a telescopic sensor RAD02 can deploy its telescopic with a GM tube sensor having coverage of a Hemisphere with a radius of 3.5 meters.

SmartNav, SmartRod, AMRIA, Snakebot, Firebot etc are a host of other robots designed & developed at Zenn Systems, having served to dispose off explosives at ordinance factories to creating robotic platforms for various research organizations to test & develop their algorithms and build their own platforms for their specific applications. Learn more….