Abstract
An underwater robotic system for visual inspection of reactor vessel internals has been developed. The Korea Electric Power Robot for Visual Test (KeproVt) consists of an underwater robot, a vision processor based measuring unit, a master control station and a servo control station. The vision processor based measuring unit employs a first-of-a-kind engineering technology in nuclear robotics. The vision processor makes use of a camera located at the top of the water level referenced to the reactor center line to get an image of the robot, and computes the location and orientation of the robot. The robot guided by the control station with the measuring unit can be controlled to have any motion at any position in the reactor vessel with ±1 cm positioning and ±2° heading accuracies with enough precision to inspect reactor internals. A simple and fast installation process is emphasized in the developed system. The installation process consists of hooking a vision camera on the guide rail of the refueling machine and putting a small robot (14.5 kg in weight) in the reactor cavity pool. The easy installation and automatic operation meet the demand of shortening the reactor outage and reducing the number of inspection personnel. The developed robotic system was successfully deployed at the Yonggwang Nuclear Unit 1 for the visual inspection of reactor internals.
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