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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Modular Platforms for Advanced Inspection, Locomotion, and Manipulation - 17150

Robots can provide remote access, manipulation, and inspection capabilities to augment human workers and improve safety in potentially dangerous decommissioning, radioactive waste management, and emergency response operations. However, such activities may require navigating challenging and unstructured environments, such as those with uneven terrain, obstacles, or loose debris. This remains a difficult task, even for modern robots. What's more, a robot's physical design can inhibit it from accessing hard-to-reach areas such as the tight spaces around, underneath, or inside piping and equipment. To address these challenges, we have developed a series of physically robust hardware modules that can be configured into a variety of robot morphologies, specialized to support different operational needs. Each hardware module consists of a number of onboard sensors and a high performance actuator with a series elastic element to sense and control interaction forces for improved locomotion and manipulation. Using this hardware, we have designed several robotic platforms that support the access, manipulation, and inspection requirements of decommissioning and radioactive waste management. To highlight current capabilities and potential opportunities for technological improvement, we present the outcomes from field demonstrations of our modular platforms at the Office of Environmental Management's Science of Safety Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Robotics Challenge. Specifically, results include a serpentine robot climbing vertical structures such as pipes, posts, and supports to demonstrate advanced inspection. Additionally, we discuss field trials of a similar modular configuration that yields a highly dexterous manipulator arm and camera system capable of adding manipulation and inspection functionality to existing structures. Results are presented from inspection tasks in which the manipulator is installed on another mobile robotic platform. Finally, we show our hardware modules can be reconfigured into platforms capable of withstanding significant impacts and of alternative means of locomotion, as may be required to cross terrain too challenging for traditional wheeled robots. Results describe the performance of a hexapod robot that uses proprioceptive feedback to locomote in outdoor trials reminiscent of emergency response conditions. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2024

A Behavior Tree Approach for Battery-Aware Inspection of Large Structures Using Drones

Electric multi-rotor drones have been used to inspect several structures, including large buildings and dams. In these inspections, energy consumption is a concern. To prevent the drone from running out of battery, commercial drones usually come back to their home position when the battery level reaches a minimum threshold. The pilots then need to replace the battery and use their own experience to restart the inspection mission approximately from where it ended before the drone returned home. Instead of relying on the human operator, in this paper, we automate this process using behavior trees, which is an effective way to perform autonomous mission control and supervision. By integrating battery management strategies into a behavior tree framework, this paper demonstrates the drone’s adaptive and resilient decision-making when confronted with limited power constraints. We implemented our methodology using a commercial drone and tested the proposed ideas in a photogrammetry-based inspection task.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Multi-Resolution UAV Path Replanning for Inspection of Tailings Dams

Autonomous inspection of large and complex structures with a commercial unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a challenging problem that has been addressed in recent years. In this paper, we address the global motion planning problem of creating autonomous inspection missions for UAVs considering photogrammetry constraints. We focus on the inspection of large tailings dams, which are dam structures used to store waste byproducts of mining. Our method uses a prior sparse point cloud of the dam to generate a voxel grid, where paths satisfying photogrammetry constraints are tested for collisions. We then apply the A* algorithm as a local planner to avoid obstacles within the global mission. Moreover, we address the problem of changing routes online by using octree-based multi-resolution grids for efficient and fast pathfinding. Our results, obtained using tridimensional maps of an actual coal mine tailings dam, show that using octrees for multi-resolution motion planning is faster than using a fixed voxel grid in online missions while inspecting large structures.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2017

2016 Groundwater Monitoring and Inspection Report Gnome-Coach, New Mexico, Site January 2017

The Gnome-Coach, New Mexico, Site was the location of an underground nuclear test in 1961 and a groundwater tracer test in 1963. Residual contamination remaining in the subsurface from these events requires long-term oversight. The Long-Term Surveillance and Maintenance Plan for the site describes the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management’s (LM’s) plan for monitoring groundwater (radiochemical sampling and hydraulic head measurements), inspecting the site, maintaining the site’s institutional controls, evaluating and reporting data, and documenting the site’s records and data management processes. Groundwater monitoring and site inspection activities are conducted annually. This report summarizes the results of these activities conducted during the October 2015 through September 2016 reporting period. The site inspection and annual sampling were conducted on January 27, 2016. At the time of the site inspection, the signs installed near the emplacement shaft, near well USGS-1, and around the perimeter of the site were observed as being in good condition, as were the roads, wellheads, and Project Gnome monument. No new groundwater extraction wells or oil and gas wells were installed during this reporting period on the site or in the sections that surround the site. One new application was received by the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division to install a salt water disposal well approximately 0.8 miles northeast of the Project Gnome monument. The proposed well has a planned completion depth of 15,500 feet below ground surface, but as of November 2016 a drill date has not been established.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

On-Site Inspection RadioIsotopic Spectroscopy (Osiris) System-Integration and Field-Testing Report

We have designed a system for the acquisition and analysis of high-resolution gamma-ray spectra during on-site inspections under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The On-Site Inspection RadioIsotopic Spectroscopy—OSIRIS —gamma-ray spectrometer is a mechanically-cooled, battery-powered ORTEC IDM-200V, chosen to avoid the need for liquid nitrogen during on-site inspections. The spectrometer is controlled and the spectral data analyzed by a Panasonic Toughbook notebook computer. Spectral data analysis is similar to that performed by traditional gamma-ray spectrometers, except the OSIRIS gamma-ray spectral data are filtered to display only radioisotopic information relevant to CTBT on-site inspections, for example, the fission-product isotope Zr-95 and its daughter isotope Nb-95. The OSIRIS software assists the user during operation with software checklists for startup and shutdown, and menu-selected display windows during energy calibration and data acquisition. OSIRIS can be operated in either sample-counting mode or the in-situ mode. In this report, the extensive system-integration tests of the OSIRIS system carried out in 2015-2017 are described, including tests at Idaho National Laboratory, at the Nevada National Security Site (formerly, the Nevada Test Site), and at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. We also note recent software enhancements and the steps to our successful commercialization of OSIRIS.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
NASA NTRS2014

Vision Based Autonomous Robotic Control for Advanced Inspection and Repair

The advanced inspection system is an autonomous control and analysis system that improves the inspection and remediation operations for ground and surface systems. It uses optical imaging technology with intelligent computer vision algorithms to analyze physical features of the real-world environment to make decisions and learn from experience. The advanced inspection system plans to control a robotic manipulator arm, an unmanned ground vehicle and cameras remotely, automatically and autonomously. There are many computer vision, image processing and machine learning techniques available as open source for using vision as a sensory feedback in decision-making and autonomous robotic movement. My responsibilities for the advanced inspection system are to create a software architecture that integrates and provides a framework for all the different subsystem components; identify open-source algorithms and techniques; and integrate robot hardware.

sensory feedback↗
NASA NTRS2020

Laser Based Remote and Rapid Inspection for Composite Plates

Composites have been extensively used in aero structure and become the predominate components in the new airframes. Thus, rapid and effective inspection for composite structures is highly desired in aerospace engineering in order to shorten the certificate cycle for new structures or provide safety guarantee for existing ones. In this paper, a laser based remote Lamb wave inspection system is presented and implemented on composite plates for simulated damage detection. The system employs pulsed laser (PL) and scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) for noncontact and remote Lamb wave actuation and wavefield sensing. A composite plate with simulated defect (surface bonded quartz rod) is inspected with the PL-SLDV laser system. Wave scattering are observed in the SLDV acquired wavefield and the damage is further evaluated with wavefield imaging and frequency wavenumber analysis. Potential application towards automatic PL Lamb wave excitation is also explored through employing an industry robotic arm towards rapid inspection.

Lamb waves↗
NASA NTRS1994

A Highly Redundant Robot System for Inspection

The work on the serpentine inspection system at JPL is described. The configuration of the inspection system consists of 20 DOF in total. In particular, the design and development of the serpentine micromanipulator end-effector tool which has 12 DOF is described. The inspection system is used for application in JPL's Remote Surface Inspection project and as a research tool in redundant manipulator control.

robot↗
NASA NTRS1994

Virtual Window Telepresence System for Telerobotics Inspection

Telerobotic inspection can be used in environments that are too hazardous, removed or expensive for direct human inspection. Telerobotic inspection is a complex task requiring an operator to control and coordinate a robot and sensors, while monitoring and interpreting sensor data to detect flaws. A virtual window telepresence system has been developed to aid the operator in performing these inspections.

telepresnece↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft Post Flight MMOD Inspection Campaign

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft performed 20 resupply flights to the International Space Station (ISS) between 2012 and 2020. After each mission, a team led by the NASA Johnson Space Center Hypervelocity Impact Technology (HVIT) Group inspected each Dragon vehicle exterior for hypervelocity impact damage. A general description of the inspected vehicle areas is provided as well as mission details such as exposure duration and launch dates. This paper documents the general inspection procedure for collection of data and the post inspection data analysis process. It also provides details of the observation data collected in addition to the spectroscopic analysis results of intact samples collected to discern the source of the impacting particle. A comparison between observed impacts and the expected number of damage features calculated by Bumper 3 with the latest micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) environments are also presented. Statistics on the >300 impact features documented in the database will provide insight into the depth to diameter ratios and other relationships. The quality of the comparison between the observations and code predictions are dependent on several factors. The paper provides details of each of these variables.

orbital debris↗
DOE OSTI2022

Integration of the Kromek D3S Detector and Spot Robot For Secondary Inspections

Inspecting vehicles and containers for the presence of nuclear material is a challenging task for border control and security. When performed manually by inspectors, this task also has an associated risk of exposing the inspectors to unknown radiation. With the advent of agile, easy-to-program, quadruped robots like the Boston Dynamics Spot, automation of secondary inspection can improve the efficiency of the inspection process and alleviates the radiation risks to inspectors. In this project, Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Massachussetts at Lowell explored how to automate a simple secondary inspection mission. The Spot robot comes with its own software development kit (SDK) that allows clients/users to write custom code in the Python programming language to control the robot. Spot also has a payload computer called Spot-CORE, which runs the Ubuntu Linux operating system and allows users to integrate external sensors, such as a radiation detector, with Spot. In this study, the Kromek D3S detector has been integrated with Spot via the Spot-CORE, allowing Spot to capture gamma spectra and neutron counts for a specified acquisition period. Two custom routines, search and confirmation, have been developed and executed in this specified order. The search routine directs Spot to go around the nearest obstacle, e.g., vehicle and container, in a preset distance and step to collect gamma and neutron gross counts with the D3S detector. The radiation data and the robot location corresponding to each step are stored and fed to the confirmation routine at the end of the search. The confirmation routine then navigates Spot to the locations of the highest gamma or neutron counts to perform a long, e.g., one minute, measurement, and gives the operators the signature gamma spectra and neutron counts at the hotspots. This paper presents a detailed description of this automated system along with results of the preliminary tests in identifying the location and signature of a 137Cs radiation source in a vehicle.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2018

Waste Retrieval and Inspection Operations in Hanford Tank 241-AY-102 - 18234

In August 2012, a periodic annulus inspection of tank 241-AY-102 (AY-102) identified a leak from the primary tank into the secondary containment. A pumping plan was developed in 2013 to provide a path forward for recommended remediation actions to be implemented as part of the AY-102 Recovery Project. On March 21, 2014, the Washington State Department of Ecology issued an Administrative Order requiring Washington River Protection Solutions and the United States Department of Energy to conduct actions related to and including the removal of waste from AY-102. The parties agreed to resolve the appeal of the Administrative Order through a Settlement Agreement which addressed the remaining requirements and implemented enforceable milestone dates, including completion of waste removal operations, and performance of an inspection aimed at determining the cause of the leak. The AY-102 Recovery Project was developed to address the Settlement Agreement requirements. While retrieval of waste from Single-Shell Tanks has been performed at Hanford for decades, retrieval from Double-Shell Tank AY-102 required adaptation of the existing technologies to a new environment on a larger scale than previously encountered. Despite countless challenges and obstacles encountered throughout, the project successfully completed system design, fabrication, installation, testing, and retrieval operations within a highly compressed, aggressive schedule. Waste removal activities in AY-102 completed in February 2017. Subsequent inspection activities were completed as part of a multi-step process aimed at determining the likely cause of failure and assessing the feasibility of repair. A variety of input data were used in evaluating the likely failure mechanism, such as video examinations that revealed numerous through-floor penetrations and significant degradation across the visible surface area. Based on the operational history of the tank, corrosion testing and analysis, and the visual appearance of the confirmed leak sites, service-induced pitting corrosion due to the historic waste composition and operating conditions appears to be the primary degradation mechanism leading to failure of the tank. The inspection data has demonstrated that repairing and returning AY-102 to service would likely introduce substantial technical, logistical, and financial challenges due to the extent of bottom-plate damage. As a result, tank AY-102 will ultimately be closed. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2017

Data-driven analysis of ultrasonic pressure tube inspection data - 220

Pressure tubes are critical components of the CANDU reactors and other pressurized heavy water type reactors, as they contain the nuclear fuel and the coolant. Manufacturing flaws, as well as defects developed during the in-service operation, can lead to coolant leakage and can potentially damage the reactor. The current inspection process of these flaws is based on manually analyzing ultrasonic data received from multiple probes during planned, statutory outages. Recent advances on ultrasonic inspection tools enable the provision of high resolution data of significantly large volumes. This is highlighting the need for an efficient autonomous signal analysis process. Typically, the automation of ultrasonic inspection data analysis is approached by knowledge-based or supervised data-driven methods. This work proposes an unsupervised data-driven framework that requires no explicit rules, nor individually labeled signals. The framework follows a two-stage clustering procedure that utilizes the DBSCAN density-based clustering algorithm and aims to provide decision support for the assessment of potential defects in a robust and consistent way. Nevertheless, verified defect dimensions are essential in order to assess the results and train the framework for unseen defects. Initial results of the implementation are presented and discussed, with the method showing promise as a means of assessing ultrasonic inspection data. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Automatic inspection of program state in an uncooperative environment

Abstract The program state is formed by the values that the program manipulates. These values are stored in the stack, in the heap, or in static memory. The ability to inspect the program state is useful as a debugging or as a verification aid. Yet, there exists no general technique to insert inspection points in type‐unsafe languages such as C or C++. The difficulty comes from the need to traverse the memory graph in a so‐called uncooperative environment. In this article, we propose an automatic technique to deal with this problem. We introduce a static code transformation approach that inserts in a program the instrumentation necessary to report its internal state. Our technique has been implemented in LLVM. It is possible to adjust the granularity of inspection points trading precision for performance. In this article, we demonstrate how to use inspection points to debug compiler optimizations; to augment benchmarks with verification code; and to visualize data structures.

Magalhães, José Wesley de Souza↗
DOE OSTI2025

Heliostat optical error inspection with polarimetric imaging drone

On a Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) field, optical errors have significant impacts on the collection efficiency of heliostats. Fast, cost-effective, labor-efficient, and non-intrusive autonomous field inspection remains a challenge. Approaches using imaging drone, i.e., Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system integrated with high resolution visible imaging sensors, have been developed to address these challenges; however, these approaches are often limited by insufficient imaging contrast. Here, in this study, we report a polarimetry-based method with a polarization imaging system integrated on UAV to enhance imaging contrast for in-situ detection of heliostat mirrors without interrupting field operation. We developed an optical model for skylight polarization pattern to simulate the polarization images of heliostat mirrors and obtained optimized waypoints for polarimetric imaging drone flight path to capture images with enhanced contrast. The polarimetric imaging-based method improved the success rate of edge detections in scenarios which were challenging for mirror edge detection with conventional imaging sensors. We have performed field tests to achieve significantly enhanced heliostat edge detection success rate and investigate the feasibility of integrating polarimetric imaging method with existing imaging-based heliostat inspection methods, i.e., Polarimetric Imaging Heliostat Inspection Method (PIHIM). Our preliminary field test results suggest that the PIHIM hold the promise to enable sufficient imaging contrast for real-time autonomous imaging and detection of heliostat field, thus suitable for non-interruptive fast CSP field inspection during its operation.

CSP Field↗
DOE OSTI2017

Choosing a reliability inspection plan for interval censored data

Reliability test plans are important for producing precise and accurate assessment of reliability characteristics. This paper explores different strategies for choosing between possible inspection plans for interval censored data given a fixed testing timeframe and budget. A new general cost structure is proposed for guiding precise quantification of total cost in inspection test plan. Multiple summaries of reliability are considered and compared as the criteria for choosing the best plans using an easily adapted method. Different cost structures and representative true underlying reliability curves demonstrate how to assess different strategies given the logistical constraints and nature of the problem. Results show several general patterns exist across a wide variety of scenarios. Given the fixed total cost, plans that inspect more units with less frequency based on equally spaced time points are favored due to the ease of implementation and consistent good performance across a large number of case study scenarios. Plans with inspection times chosen based on equally spaced probabilities offer improved reliability estimates for the shape of the distribution, mean lifetime, and failure time for a small fraction of population only for applications with high infant mortality rates. The paper uses a Monte Carlo simulation based approach in addition to the common evaluation based on the asymptotic variance and offers comparison and recommendation for different applications with different objectives. Additionally, the paper outlines a variety of different reliability metrics to use as criteria for optimization, presents a general method for evaluating different alternatives, as well as provides case study results for different common scenarios.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

Impact of noise sources and optical design on defect detection sensitivity in extreme ultraviolet actinic pattern inspection tool

Here, we discuss the impact of various noise sources and the optical design in bright field extreme ultraviolet (EUV) actinic inspection of mask features for defects in the patterned absorber. It is shown that an optimum pixel size is needed to maximize the defect signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to balance the trade-off in increasing signal strength with shot noise from defect signal and the background pattern intensity (mask layout image) and speckle noise from the mask blank roughness. Moreover, we consider defocus showing that the EUV mask phase effect has an asymmetric impact on pattern defect SNR's through-focus behavior. The impact of defocus limits inspection performance based on defect SNR. Using critical defect sizes in a case study, we show the defect SNR performance of the limiting case and discuss the possibility of utilizing a nominal defocus in the inspection system to leverage the phase effect of EUV mask absorber to improve the defect SNR. A 50% improvement in defect SNR is shown to be possible by introducing a -50 nm nominal defocus into the bright field inspection system.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

WNR Facility FP90L Visual Inspection Report

An external and internal visual inspection of FP90L was performed March 2020. This report presents the results from this visual inspection, detailing individual components and their relative location along FP90L within the WNR facility bulk shield. This report will present the data gathered from this visual inspection. Then, utilizing available facility drawings as well as LIDAR data from surveys performed in the spring/summer of 2019, this inspection data will be merged with previous efforts and studies regarding the WNR facility to document a more complete representation of the current state of WNR FP90L.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗