Abstract
For the planned teleoperated maintenance of the experimental fusion plant ITER the time performance will be critical. Telemanipulated task execution is however characterised by long execution times compared to similar tasks performed hands-on. There is little quantitative research on task performance of telemanipulated maintenance available to give insight into most effective areas for improvement.In this paper a detailed analysis of real world remote maintenance at fusion plant JET is performed with the aim to: i) identify bottlenecks in task completion time and ii) quantify the room for potential improvement.Video recordings of the installation of 50 tiles executed by the three official master-slave operators were analysed. The task execution was characterised by a large variation in time performance, between but also within operators. Reduction of this variation could theoretically result in time reduction up to 41%. Recurring tasks like ‘rough/fine approach’ and ‘retreat’ covered more than 50% of the total task completion time and were identified as most promising for further improvement.The results will be the base for further research on operator assistance with augmented visual or haptic guidance.
Highlights
The planned experimental nuclear fusion plant ITER [1] is a worldwide project with the aim to prove the feasibility of fusion power as a future energy source
The novel data was gathered from video recordings at fusion plant Joint European Torus (JET), of the remote installation of 40 tile carriers performed by the three qualified master-slave operators, and of 10 extra tile carriers performed during training of a new operator
Based on a time-action analysis of the 50 tiles, it can be concluded that incidental non-nominal actions have a large impact on the absolute execution time of the entire tile placement; if these could be prevented it would result in a decrease of 30% in total execution time
Summary
The planned experimental nuclear fusion plant ITER [1] is a worldwide project with the aim to prove the feasibility of fusion power as a future energy source. Besides satisfying high quality and safety requirements, it is a critical challenge to perform the teleoperated maintenance in the smallest possible time-frame to keep the substantial downtime of the plant within reasonable limits [3]. This is especially a challenge because teleoperated task execution is often characterised by low situational awareness, high operator workloads, human error and relative long execution times [4,5]. What are promising directions to improve teleoperated task execution for ITER maintenance? Significant improvements have been achieved in terms of device performance (e.g. control algorithms [6,7,8,9], hardware design [4,10,11]) and visual feedback (e.g. stereoscopic viewing, augmented visual feedback [12,13]) it is widely recognized that telemanipulated task performance, especially reflected in task completion time, is still suboptimal
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