Assessing tele-manipulation systems using task performance for glovebox operations

Tele-manipulation is indispensable for the nuclear industry since teleoperated robots cancel the radiation hazard problem for the operator. The majority of the teleoperated solutions used in the nuclear industry rely on bilateral teleoperation, utilizing a variation of the 4-channel architecture, where the motion and force signals of the local and remote robots are exchanged in the communication channel. However, the performance limitation of teleoperated robots for nuclear decommissioning tasks is not clearly answered in the literature. In this study, we assess the task performance in bilateral tele-manipulation for radiation surveying in gloveboxes and compare it to radiation surveying of a glovebox operator. To analyze the performance, an experimental setup suitable for human operation (manual operation) and tele-manipulation is designed. Our results showed that a current commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) teleoperated robotic manipulation solution is flexible, yet insufficient, as its task performance is significantly lower when compared to manual operation and potentially hazardous for the equipment inside the glovebox. Finally, we propose a set of potential solutions, derived from both our observations and expert interviews, that could improve the performance of teleoperation systems in glovebox environments in future work.