Making Rad Maps With Robot Dogs

Key Takeaways. Radiation mapping can be used to improve safety at sites with radioactive sources (such as power plants or hospitals), enforce non-proliferation agreements, or guide environmental cleanup and disaster response Scientists at Berkeley Lab have created multi-sensor systems that can map nuclear radiation in 3D in real time and are now testing how to integrate their system with robots that can autonomously investigate radiation areas Smarter robots could help human operators assess difficult-to-access environments and reduce risk from hazards including radiation exposure and damaged infrastructure In 2013, researchers carried a Microsoft Kinect camera through houses in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture. The device's infrared light traced the contours of the buildings, making a rough 3D map. On top of this, the team layered information from an early version of a hand-held gamma-ray imager, displaying the otherwise invisible nuclear radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. This month, scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ÜBerkeley Lab) are teaching a robotic dog to intelligently hunt out radiological material using a self-contained suite of sensors on its back. It's fair to say radiation mapping has come a long way. "It can take a long time to see improvement in radiological technology like gamma-ray detectors, so we're defining the state-of-the-art by leveraging other sensor types," said Ren Cooper, deputy head of Berkeley Lab's Applied Nuclear Physics (ANP) program.