Development of simulation systems for telemanipulators in confined cell facilities

Abstract

The considered simulation tasks are based on an electrometallurgical process development strategy and associated telemanipulator simulation systems are proposed with various scales of experimental facilities. Fundamentally, target facilities are assumed to be operated only by remote handling systems because the considered process is operated in hazardous environments. Futhermore, the feasibility at various scales should be experimentally verified with gradual increase in throughput. In this regard, bench, engineering, and pilot-scale simulation systems are important early-stage tools for assessing the practical operability of the target process with the material handling systems. Such simulation systems are highly customized for applications and are a precursor to larger pilot and demonstration-scale plants. This paper introduced and classified the developed simulator systems for this approach at various scales using remote handling systems which were assembled inside a virtual target facility, and the man-machine interface was included for a more realistic operation of the simulator. The results obtained for each simulator show the feasibility and requirement for improvement of the systems for the considered test issues with respect to the operation and maintenance of the process. Keywords: Telemanipulator, Remote handling system, Autonomous teleoperation system, Hardware In the Loop Simulation (HILS), Virtual Reality (VR), Confined cell facility