Robotics in the Spot-light

Spot the robot dog made its debut on the Sellafield site in October this year, and has once again been going through its paces by completing its first shift in an active area by collecting valuable information through laser scanning and gamma radiation imaging.

The robot completed its work wearing a specially designed suit, which protected it from any radioactive contamination.

Our remediation technical and engineering and maintenance teams are leading on Spot’s deployment for Sellafield Ltd, working with Cumbria-based engineering consultant Createc, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and its US manufacturers Boston Dynamics.

Chris Hope, remediation capability development manager, Sellafield Ltd said:

This was a really challenging task – we deployed Spot into a complex, cluttered, highly contaminated area with a mission to capture information.

The quality of the data we captured is fantastic and will help us with our decommissioning and waste planning.

Until now, this type of survey has relied on our operators manually deploying equipment in hazardous environments wearing full protective equipment.

This proves that Spot can help us take humans away from harm. This allows us to free up our workers to deliver other value adding work.

The protective suit did its job too – the robot was monitored and cleared by our health physics team, and was able to leave the Sellafield site.