TY - JOUR
T1 - Simultaneous, robot-compatible γ-ray spectroscopy and imaging of an operating nuclear reactor
AU - Tsitsimpelis, Ioannis
AU - West, Andrew
AU - Licata, Mauro
AU - Aspinall, Michael D
AU - Jazbec, Anže
AU - Snoj, Luka
AU - Martin, Philip
AU - Lennox, Barry
AU - Joyce, Malcolm J
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received August 3, 2020; revised October 19, 2020; accepted October 24, 2020. Date of publication November 11, 2020; date of current version January 15, 2021. This work was supported in part by the U.K. Research and Innovation via the TOtal characterisation by Remote Observation of Nuclear Environments (TORONE) consortium under Grant EP/P018505/1 and RAIN Hub EP/R026084/1. The work of Anz˘e Jazbec and Luka Snoj was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, Research Core Funding under Grant P2-0073 and Infrastructure Program I0-0005. The work of Barry Lennox was supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, U.K., under Grant CiET1819/13. The work of Malcolm J. Joyce was supported by the EPSRC U.K. under Grant ADRIANA EP/L025671/1. The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was Dr. S. Xia. (Corresponding author: Ioannis Tsitsimpelis.) Ioannis Tsitsimpelis, Mauro Licata, Michael D. Aspinall, and Malcolm J. Joyce are with Department of Engineering, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YW, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; m.d.aspinall@ lancaster.ac.uk; [email protected]).
Funding Information:
Ioannis Tsitsimpelis and Andrew West wish to thank the team at the JSI TRIGA reactor facility and Dr. Christopher Tighe of Lancaster University for their support and expertise during deployment. Malcolm Joyce also acknowledges the support of the Royal Society, U.K., as a Wolfson Research Merit Award holder.
Publisher Copyright:
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Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/11/11
Y1 - 2020/11/11
N2 - The design and test of a robot-compatible, radiation detection instrument providing simultaneous γ-ray imaging and γ-ray spectroscopy is described. The sensing system comprises a cerium bromide inorganic scintillation detector and a cylindrical, lead slot collimator that is configured with a robot-compatible, on-board data acquisition system. The mount for the sensor is a lightweight, bespoke 3-axis gimbal actuated by servos for pan, tilt and rotation of the collimator for imaging capability. This paper discusses the integration of this relatively low-cost radiation detection apparatus with a commercially available, Robot-Operating-System-controlled robotic platform (a Clearpath Robotics™ Jackal). The detection system is compliant with the power and mass payload constraints of the robot. Its performance has been evaluated by means of two practical examples: a) measurements in a laboratory environment to assess the ability of the system to resolve two caesium-137 point sources, and b) deployment at the Jožef Stefan Institute TRIGA Mark II research reactor to assess the ability of the system to characterise the γ-ray emission at 1 kW from a horizontal tangential beam port in the reactor hall and from the reactor sample pool above the core.
AB - The design and test of a robot-compatible, radiation detection instrument providing simultaneous γ-ray imaging and γ-ray spectroscopy is described. The sensing system comprises a cerium bromide inorganic scintillation detector and a cylindrical, lead slot collimator that is configured with a robot-compatible, on-board data acquisition system. The mount for the sensor is a lightweight, bespoke 3-axis gimbal actuated by servos for pan, tilt and rotation of the collimator for imaging capability. This paper discusses the integration of this relatively low-cost radiation detection apparatus with a commercially available, Robot-Operating-System-controlled robotic platform (a Clearpath Robotics™ Jackal). The detection system is compliant with the power and mass payload constraints of the robot. Its performance has been evaluated by means of two practical examples: a) measurements in a laboratory environment to assess the ability of the system to resolve two caesium-137 point sources, and b) deployment at the Jožef Stefan Institute TRIGA Mark II research reactor to assess the ability of the system to characterise the γ-ray emission at 1 kW from a horizontal tangential beam port in the reactor hall and from the reactor sample pool above the core.
KW - Robotics and automation
KW - detection
KW - environmental monitoring and control
KW - estimation and classification based on sensor data
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85098751827
U2 - 10.1109/JSEN.2020.3035147
DO - 10.1109/JSEN.2020.3035147
M3 - Article
SN - 1530-437X
VL - 21
SP - 5434
EP - 5443
JO - IEEE Sensors Journal
JF - IEEE Sensors Journal
IS - 4
M1 - 9257083
ER -