Teleoperated manipulator for leak detection of sealed radioactive sources

This paper introduces a practical teleoperated manipulator under nuclear radioactive environments. The system, called RoboSource herein, is designed to perform the leak detection of sealed gamma and neutron radioactive sources used for oil well logging in oilfields. RoboSource includes two stations connected via RS-485 and with a distance of up to 1.2 Km. The base station (safe zone), with an industrial PC as the master controller, provides the operator console and performs the high-level control of the manipulator, and the field station (hazardous zone), with a programmable logic controller as the cell controller, is responsible for the motion control of the manipulator and radiation contamination detection. Two manipulator arms with pneumatic actuators and electric motors, two cameras, and a radiation contamination detector are deployed to the field station. With the intuitive Windows style graphic user interface and the live video from the field station, the human operator can effectively control and monitor the manipulator at the base station. RoboSource has been employed to perform the leak detection of sealed radioactive sources, which was completed manually by human workers before, in the Shengli Oilfield, the second largest oilfield in China.