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Intelligent Mobile Sensor System (IMSS) for Autonomous Monitoring & Inspection (AMI)

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Tech ID: 264
Project Overview
A mobile robotics device with enhanced intelligence and dexterity/manueverability was developed to perform remote survey and inspection of stored waste drums in order to avoid/reduce personnel exposure and to provide an alternative to passive monitoring, which uses fixed sensors distributed within the containment building.

Technology Description
The key technologies in IMSS are the inspection sensors, the autonomous navigation system, and the integrated database system. The required inspection platform is similar to a science mission in that it must gather, store, and correlate data. The sensor systems to be used include commercial components as well as derivatives of those designed to survey the Martian surface from a rover (miniaturized to fit on a vehicle and with a computer interface). The tasks of initially locating the drums, detecting surface dents, and measuring drum tilt are essentially three-dimensional tasks, requiring accurate measurement of three dimensional points on the surface of the drums. Active vision techniques using structured light or laser ranging are better for cost and performance. Two reasons for this are: 1) the majority of the drum surface is visually smooth and featureless and 2) stereo vision algorithms typically are much more computationally intensive and less reliable than direct range measurement using structured light or laser ranging. identification of other defects and labels relies on a color vision system. All defects are processed onboard in real time. Safety qualification of a vehicle operating in close proximity to hazardous and volatile wastes is an issue at Department of Energy (DOE) facilities. The vehicle must operate in a potentially explosive environment, there must be no collisions with containers that might release contaminants into the environment, and the vehicle must be fail-operational so that in case of equipment failure, the vehicle can still return to its base without human operators retrieving it. The IMSS is designed to meet all applicable requirements for safe operation in a wide range of environments. The IMSS is one of three drum inspection technologies to participate in a 'bake-off' among similar and competing technologies. The other two systems are the Automated Baseline Change Detection (ABCD) System (also developed by Lockheed Martin) and the Intelligent Inspection and Survey Robot (ARIES, developed by the South Carolina Universities Research and Education Foundation).

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