Three-dimensional sensing, graphics, and interactive control in a human-machine system for decontamination and decommissioning applications

Decontamination and Decommissioning (D important requirement of the U.S. Department of Energy''s Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (ERWM) program. Means need to be devised to minimize radiation exposure to humans involved in the D research presented in this paper describes a human-machine system which can be employed for performing radiation scan and pipe cutting operations in a typical D Advanced Servomanipulator (ASM) from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), we have designed a hybrid telerobotic pipe-cutting module. The module, when fully integrated, will allow users of the ASM to exploit the original functionality of the telerobot when our pipe cutting system is not in use. Comprising the pipe-cutting system are interactive three- dimensional object localization, graphical task modeler, arm control, human-machine interface, radiation sensor, and cut-tool sub-systems. Only the task modeler and interactive object localization modules are discussed in this paper. The goal of these modules is to interactively localize an object, usually a pipe, and display it in a three-dimensional rendering of the work space. Through interaction with these modules, the supervisor coordinates a task- specific sequence of actions that the lower-level sub-systems will perform.