The last decade has seen significant progress in the development and use of robots in nuclear environments across fission, fusion, and big science (e.g. CERN). Whilst much of the early application focus was on decommissioning and disaster response in highly radioactive environments, this has shifted significantly to encompass day-to-day operations and maintenance in low-radiation areas. Additionally, fusion energy presents a potentially game-changing solution to present climate and energy security challenges, yet has significant outstanding challenges that need solving including those related to robotic maintenance.
Despite these new opportunities, there are still barriers to the wider robotics community engaging with nuclear end-users. This workshop is a Call to Action to the robotics community, presenting a Grand Challenges which act as focal points for fundamental robotics research. These Grand Challenges have been developed by the global nuclear community specifically for the robotics research community to provide direction for the next 5 – 10 years of research. The workshop will also address how to remove barriers with respect to demonstrating research to the nuclear communities to open the application domain to the whole robotics community, through the use of mechanisms such as digital twins, demonstration environments and accessing real-world test facilities.
