Robots in radioactive environments

With improving technology and the growing perception of the need to keep human workers away from high radiation areas, more competitive robotic systems are increasingly becoming available. This article describes our ten years of experience in developing telerobotic systems for maintenance operations in the Spanish nuclear industry. It also describes a teleoperation platform that can be used with standard robots or with specially designed service robots. The modular architecture of this teleoperation platform has allowed the reuse of software components designed for very different applications and drastically reduce development lead time.