Development of Remote Construction System of Modularized Rail Structure for Inexperienced Operators

Abstract

Remotely controlled robots are required to operate in human-inaccessible environments, such as the decommissioning of nuclear power plants. In our previous studies, we proposed a modularized rail structure for such environments. In long-term decommissioning work at a nuclear power plant, robots are controlled by inexperienced operators who have limited knowledge of the design details of the robots. In this study, we developed a remote construction system for supporting inexperienced operators by transmitting the status information of the constructor robot to the operator during the remote construction of a modularized rail structure. The proposed remote construction system was designed based on a human information-processing model. Experiments were conducted using the developed remote construction system. The proposed method achieved a success count of inexperienced operators equivalent to that of skilled operators. Furthermore, a questionnaire administered to participants showed that their cognitive, psychological, and physical loads during construction were sufficiently low during the experiment.