Autonomous robot replaces human fusion reactor inspectors in world-first trial

Removing humans from hazardous inspection work

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What just happened? Researchers have successfully deployed a fully autonomous robot to inspect the inside of a nuclear fusion reactor. This achievement – the first of its kind – took place over 35 days as part of trials at the UK Atomic Energy Authority's Joint European Torus facility.

JET was one of the world's largest and most powerful operational fusion reactors until it was recently shut down. Meanwhile, the robotic star of the show was, of course, the four-legged Spot robot from Boston Dynamics, souped up with "localization and mission autonomy solutions" from the Oxford Robotics Institute (ORI) and "inspection payload" from UKAEA.

Spot roamed JET's environment twice daily, using sensors to map the facility layout, monitor conditions, steer around obstacles and personnel, and collect vital data. These inspection duties normally require human operators to control the robot remotely.

"This deployment demonstrates that autonomous robots can enhance safety and cut costs," said Dr. Robert Skilton from UKAEA's hazardous environments team. "These 'next generation' solutions are becoming ready to be used in other industrial facilities such as nuclear decommissioning, environmental clean-up, and disaster relief."

The team wanted to validate that autonomous robotic tech is reliable enough for the long-term maintenance needs of fusion power plants. Human access to these facilities is limited due to the extreme environments inside, including radiation, vacuum conditions, and high temperatures.

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Professor Nick Hawes of ORI explained the motivation: "Projects like this demonstrate the value of autonomous robots – robots that can do things themselves without direct control of humans. They also ground our science in real use cases, and provide requirements and constraints that drive us to invent new AI and robotics algorithms."

For UKAEA, the robo-inspection was an important first step toward eventually decommissioning the JET facility and potentially repurposing it for future fusion projects. Demonstrating reliable autonomous inspections moves that process along.

The Oxford team didn't have to build their platform from the ground up. They used Boston Dynamics' existing hardware and collision avoidance systems, technologies that have matured significantly over the years. The Spot platform itself has taken on diverse roles like a cleaner, gardener, security patrol, and entertainment performer – even as it sees strong competition from the significantly cheaper Chinese alternative, Unitree Go2.

It's also worth noting that deploying robot dogs at nuclear sites isn't an entirely new phenomenon. This past May, a Spot robot was used to help decommission a nuclear power plant in northern Scotland. It created detailed 3D mapping models to give engineers valuable dataset insights for planning the full decommissioning process. However, UKAEA and ORI claim their deployment was a world-first since it was fully autonomous.

_{Image credit: Oxford Robotics Institute}