A new positioning method for remotely operated vehicle of the nuclear power plant
ISSN: 0143-991x
Article publication date: 26 November 2019
Issue publication date: 23 March 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a new positioning method for remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in the nuclear power plant. The ROV of the nuclear power plant is developed to inspect the reactor cavity pools, the component pools and spent-fuel storage pools. To enhance the operational safety, the ability of localizing the ROV is indispensable.
Design/methodology/approach
Therefore, the positioning method is proposed based on the MEMS inertial measurement unit and mechanical scanning sonar in this paper. Firstly, the ROV model and on board sensors are introduced in detail. Then the sensor-based Kalman filter is deduced for attitude estimation. After that, the positioning method is proposed that divided into static positioning and dynamic positioning. The improved iterative closest point-Kalman filter is deduced to estimate the global position by the whole circle scanning sonar data in static, and the relative positioning method is proposed by the small scale scanning sonar data in dynamic.
Findings
The performance of the proposed method is verified by comparing with the visual positioning system. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is proved by the experiment in the reactor simulation pool of the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant.
Originality/value
The research content of this manuscript is aimed at the specific application needs of nuclear power plants and has high theoretical significance and application value.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Suzhou CNNC Huadong Radiation Co., Ltd, Suzhou, China, for the help in the radiation test of the ROV, and also thank China Nuclear Power Technology Research Institute, Shenzhen, China, for its contribution to the development of the ROV and providing the test site in the reactor simulation pool of the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant.
Funding: This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant No.61903011, 51675008, in part by the Natural National Key Basic Research Program of China under grant No.2013CB035503, and in part by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China under grant No.2011AA040201.
Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Citation
Dong, M., Li, J. and Chou, W. (2020), "A new positioning method for remotely operated vehicle of the nuclear power plant", Industrial Robot, Vol. 47 No. 2, pp. 177-186. https://doi.org/10.1108/IR-07-2019-0140
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited