Real-World Robotic Competitions for Radiological and Nuclear Inspection Tasks

Lessons learned from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters and from decommissioning of old nuclear facilities show that robots have certain advantages in this field. However, especially in situations with radiological and nuclear (RN) threats robotic systems have been of very limited practical use so far. This is mainly due to the severe technical difficulties and the lack of testing possibilities for such scenarios. But there is also a limited interest of the scientific community. One possible means to tackle these problems is through robotic trials and competitions. The paper motivates this approach and presents advantages and possible drawbacks. Afterwards, some of the few already established competitions with radiological and nuclear tasks and scenarios are described. For each of these events a detailed insight into the setting and the tasks, the obtained results, and the future way ahead is presented.