Motion Planning of Large Scale Vehicles for Remote Material Transportation

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project is aworldwide research experiment that aims to explore nuclear fusion as a viable source of energy for the coming years. Mobile robotics plays an important role in the remote handling systems that perform the maintenance operations in ITER. The Cask and Plug Remote Handling System (CPRHS) is one of the remote handling systems that transports heavy and highly activated in-vessel components between the Tokamak Building and the Hot Cell Building, the two main buildings of the ITER facility. The CPRHS has dimensions similar to an autobus, maximum weight of 100 tons, kinematics of a rhombic like vehicle (two drivable and steerable wheels) and has to move in cluttered environments. The main challenges described in this chapter are the definition of motion planning strategies that cope with the building maps and the cluttered environments. The algorithms were developed and implemented in a standalone application that receives CAD models of the buildings and returns the best trajectories, including reports of the most risky points of collision, and the swept volume of the vehicle along the missions. More than 700 trajectories were computed for different CPRHS types applied in the models of the real scenarios, crucial to proceed with the construction of the Tokamak Building.