Cyber-Physical Robots for Fukushima (NEST Fellowship)

OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Research Fellowship in Japan

Overview

The NEA launched the Nuclear Education, Skills and Technology (NEST) Framework in partnership with its member countries to help address important gaps in nuclear skills capacity building, knowledge transfer and technical innovation in an international context. The project focuses on enhancing the manipulability and operability of a robotic arm by presenting a localised virtual robot model and a 3D map using visual simultaneous localization and mapping (VSLAM). The system is based on real-world captured images and aims to improve the situational awareness of remote robot operators without requiring a complex or computationally demanding setup. The deliverable is a fully integrated digital twin that combines ROS-RVIZ configuration and Unity simulation to visualize robot joint states alongside the 3D point cloud map generated by the ORB-SLAM2 ROS package, using a low-cost USB camera.

Contribution

I completed a 4-week research secondment at the Naraha Centre for Remote Control Technology (NARREC) in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. During this time, I worked closely with the Spatial Information Creation and Control System Research Group, led by Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata, and collaborated with JAEA/CLADS researchers. My contributions included integrating the digital twin setup and ensuring seamless functionality between the ROS-RVIZ configuration and Unity simulation. This work helped deliver a practical and low-cost solution to improve situational awareness for remote robot operators of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

In 2024, I was included in the top 10 NEST Research Fellows and was able to present my work to the NEST Management Board during the NEST Fellows Awards at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Headquarters in Paris, France.