Design of Remote Simulator for a Nuclear Fuel Cycle Facility

The goal of this study is to provide the basic technology for an operability of a remote manipulation of an advanced spent fuel conditioning process facility. The operability and maintainability of a manipulator in a hotcell which deals with nuclear materials is one of the most important issues that should be solved in the nuclear industry. Here, we describe the design of a graphic user interface enabling an operator to model the apparatus and equipments of a Pyroprocess and explain the mathematical background in order to manipulate a virtual manipulator under a virtual environment. We also illustrate a preliminary experiment by using a 6-DOF haptic input device to establish a remote simulation. The results show that a user deployed the apparatus at a desired position in a digital mock-up using user defined coordination module after loading the apparatus. We also found that the collision detection and force response algorithm which we applied were appropriate as we felt the force feedback whenever a virtual manipulator collided with other objects.