Semi-Autonomous Robotic Arm for Maintenance in a Radioactive Environment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

• Rashaad Ali
• Dimash Kamalzhan
• Marta Karczewicz
• Thihan Moe Kyaw
• Marco Morarles
• Alex Rodriguez

The personnel working at the Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) Target System at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory can be exposed to highly radioactive particles during maintenance. The risk to the personnel can be avoided by using a semi-autonomous robotic arm inside the hazardous environment. The current prototype of the robotic arm implements the code to detect nuts and bolts on the target system flanges. First, the Intel RealSense D435 Depth Camera was connected to the Nvidia Jetson Nano and the OpenMANIPULATOR-X robotic arm. The robotic arm uses the OpenCR and U2D2 boards as the controllers. Once the team mounted the camera to the robotic arm, the detection code had been applied to determine the coordinates of the nuts and bolts. These coordinates were then used to move the robotic arm to the target location and pick up the nuts and bolts. The Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensor will be implemented into the prototype to prevent the arm from colliding with other objects. Furthermore, the prototype will be equipped with a portable radiation detector. For future work, a rotating gripper will be incorporated into the project to fasten and loosen nuts and bolts.

See supporting documentation in the team’s Box drive.