A MODULAR TELEROBOTIC ARCHITECTURE FOR WASTE RETRIEVAL AND REMEDIATION

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed and deployed a telerobotic approach for the remote retrieval of hazardous and radioac tive wastes from underground storage tanks. The telerobotic system, bu ilt by Spar Aerospace Ltd., is capable of dislodging and removing slud ge and gravel-like wastes without endangering the human operators thro ugh direct contact with the environment. Working in partnership with W ashington University, ORNL is implementing an event-based planner/Func tion-Based Sharing Controller (FBSC) as an integral part of their over all telerobotic architecture. These aspects of the system enable the s eamless union of the human operator and an autonomous controller in su ch a way as to emphasize safety without lass of performance. The coope ration between ORNL, Spar, and Washington University requires an open and modular control software architecture to enable the parallel devel opment of various components of the system. ControlShell has been used as the underlying software architecture to help meet these criteria o f generality and modularity.