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In terms of places where you absolutely want a robot to go instead of you, what remains of the utterly destroyed Chernobyl Reactor 4 should be very near the top of your list. The reactor, which suffered a catastrophic meltdown in 1986, has been covered up in almost every way possible in an effort to keep its nuclear core contained. But eventually, that nuclear material is going to have to be dealt with somehow, and in order to do that, it’s important to understand which bits of it are just really bad, and which bits are the actual worst. And this is where Spot is stepping in to help.
如果有一個希望機器人代替你去的地方清單，徹底摧毀的車諾比4號反應堆的殘骸應該非常接近你的清單的頂部。這座反應堆在1986年遭受了災難性的熔毀，為了控制住它的核心，它幾乎用了所有可能的方法來掩蓋它。但最終，核材料將不得不以某種方式處理，為了做到這一點，重要的是要了解其中哪些是真正糟糕的，哪些是實際最糟糕的。而這正是Spot介入的地方。The big open space that Spot is walking through is right next to what’s left of Reactor 4. Within six months of the disaster, Reactor 4 was covered in a sarcophagus made of concrete and steel to try and keep all the nasty nuclear fuel from leaking out more than it already had, and it still contains 「30 tons of highly contaminated dust, 16 tons of uranium and plutonium, and 200 tons of radioactive lava.」 Oof. Over the next 10 years, the sarcophagus slowly deteriorated, and despite the addition of that gigantic network of steel support beams that you can see in the video, in the late 1990s it was decided to erect an enormous building over the entire mess to try and stabilize it for as long as possible.Spot穿過的大空地就在4號反應堆的左邊。在災難發生後的六個月內，4號反應堆被混凝土和鋼製成的石棺覆蓋，試圖阻止所有令人討厭的核燃料洩漏出比已經洩漏的更多，它仍然含有「30噸高度汙染的灰塵、16噸鈾和鈽以及200噸放射性熔巖。」。在接下來的10年裡，石棺慢慢退化，儘管視頻中增加了巨大的鋼支撐梁網，但在20世紀90年代末，人們決定在整個廢墟上建造一座巨大的建築，儘可能長時間地穩定石棺。Reactor 4 is now snugly inside the massive New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure, and the idea is that eventually, the structure will allow for the safe disassembly of what’s left of the reactor, although nobody is quite sure how to do that. This is all just to say that the area inside of the containment structure offers a lot of good opportunities for robots to take over from humans.4號反應堆現在就在這個巨大的新安全約束（NSC）結構中，這個想法是，最終，這個結構將允許安全拆卸反應堆的剩餘部分，儘管沒有人很確定如何做到這一點。這一切僅僅是說，圍堵結構內部的區域為機器人從人類手中接管提供了很多好機會。This particular Spot is owned by the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, and was packed off to Russia with the assistance of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in Nuclear (RAIN) initiative and the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics. Dr. Dave Megson-Smith, who is a researcher at the University of Bristol, in the U.K., and part of the Hot Robotics Facility at the National Nuclear User Facility, was one of the scientists lucky enough to accompany Spot on its adventure. Megson-Smith specializes in sensor development, and he equipped Spot with a collimated radiation sensor in addition to its mapping payload. 「We actually built a map of the radiation coming out of the front wall of Chernobyl power plant as we were in there with it,」 Megson-Smith told us, and was able to share this picture, which shows a map of gamma photon count rate:這一特定地點由英國原子能機構擁有，並在機器人（核動力）和人工智慧（核動力）和國家機器人核技術中心的協助下被送往俄羅斯。Dave Megson Smith博士是英國布裡斯託大學的研究員，也是國家核設施用戶的一個熱門機器人機構，他是幸運的科學家之一。梅格森·史密斯專門從事傳感器開發，除了測繪有效載荷外，他還為Spot配備了準直輻射傳感器。梅格森·史密斯告訴我們：「實際上，我們在車諾比核電站的前牆繪製了一張輻射圖，當時我們正和它在一起。」他能夠分享這張圖，圖中顯示了伽馬光子計數率：
So what’s the reason you』d want to use a very expensive legged robot to wander around what looks like a very flat and robot friendly floor? As it turns out, the floor is very dusty in there, and a priority inside the NSC is to keep dust down as much as possible, since the dust is radioactive and gets on everything and is consequently the easiest way for radioactivity to escape the NSC. 「You want to minimize picking up material, so we consider the total contact surface area,」 says Megson-Smith. 「If you use a legged system rather than a wheeled or tracked system, you have a much smaller footprint and you disturb the environment a lot less.」 While it’s nice that Spot is nimble and can climb stairs and stuff, tracked vehicles can do that as well, so in this case, the primary driving factor of choosing a robot to work inside Chernobyl is minimizing those contact points.
那麼，為什麼要用一個非常昂貴的腿機器人在看起來非常平坦和機器人友好的地板上漫步呢？事實證明，那裡的地板灰塵非常多，國家安全委員會內部的首要任務是儘可能減少灰塵，因為灰塵是放射性的，會附著在所有東西上，因此是放射性物質逃離國家安全委員會的最簡單方法。梅格森·史密斯說：「你要儘量減少材料的附著，所以我們要考慮總的接觸表面積。」。「如果你使用腿式系統，而不是輪式或履帶式系統，你的腳印會小得多，對環境的幹擾也會小得多。」雖然這個地點很靈活，可以爬樓梯之類的東西，但履帶式車輛也可以做到這一點，所以在這種情況下，選擇機器人在車諾比核電站內工作的主要驅動因素是就是儘量減少接觸點。Right now, routine weekly measurements in contaminated spaces at Chernobyl are done by humans, which puts those humans at risk. Spot, or a robot like it, could potentially take over from those humans, as a sort of 「automated safety checker」 able to work in medium level contaminated environments.」 As far as more dangerous areas go, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what Spot is actually capable of, according to Megson-Smith. 「What you think the problems are, and what the industry thinks the problems are, are subtly different things.目前，車諾比核電站汙染區域每周例行的測量都是由人類完成的，這使這些人處於危險之中。Spot或類似的機器人，有可能取代這些人類，成為一種「自動安全檢查器」，能夠在中等汙染環境中工作。「據梅格森·史密斯（Megson Smith）所說，就更危險的區域而言，Spot的實際能力有很多不確定性。「你認為問題是什麼，行業認為問題是什麼，都是微妙不同的東西。We were thinking that we』d have to make robots incredibly radiation proof to go into these contaminated environments, but they said, 「can you just give us a system that we can send into places where humans already can go, but where we just don’t want to send humans.」 Making robots incredibly radiation proof is challenging, and without extensive testing and ruggedizing, failures can be frequent, as many robots discovered at Fukushima. Indeed, Megson-Smith that in Fukushima there’s a particular section that’s known as a 「robot graveyard」 where robots just go to die, and they』ve had to up their standards again and again to keep the robots from failing. 「So the thing they’re worried about with Spot is, what is its tolerance? What components will fail, and what can we do to harden it?」 he says. 「We’re approaching Boston Dynamics at the moment to see if they』ll work with us to address some of those questions.我們原以為，要進入這些受汙染的環境，我們必須讓機器人具有難以置信的防輻射能力，但他們說，「你能不能給我們一個系統，讓我們可以把它送到人類已經可以去的地方，但我們只是不想把人類送到那裡。」讓機器人具有難以置信的防輻射能力是一個挑戰，在沒有廣泛的測試和加固的情況下，故障可能會頻繁發生，就像許多機器人在福島發現的那樣。事實上，梅格森·史密斯告訴我們，在福島有一個特殊的區域，被稱為「機器人墓地」，機器人就在那裡死去，他們不得不一次又一次地提高自己的標準，以防止機器人失敗。「所以他們擔心的是，Spot的容忍度是多少？哪些部件會失效，我們能做些什麼來硬化它？「他說。「我們正在接近波士頓動力公司，看看他們是否會與我們合作，解決其中一些問題。There’s been a small amount of testing of how robots fair under harsh radiation, Megson-Smith told us, including (relatively recently) a KUKA LBR800 arm, which 「stopped operating after a large radiation dose of 164.55(±1.09) Gy to its end effector, and the component causing the failure was an optical encoder.」 And in case you’re wondering how much radiation that is, a 1 to 2 Gy dose to the entire body gets you acute radiation sickness and possibly death, while 8 Gy is usually just straight-up death. The goal here is not to kill robots (I mean, it sort of is), but as Megson-Smith says, 「if we can work out what the weak points are in a robotic system, can we address those, can we redesign those, or at least understand when they might start to fail?」 Now all he has to do is convince Boston Dynamics to send them a Spot that they can zap until it keels over.梅格森·史密斯告訴我們，已經對機器人在惡劣輻射下的表現進行了少量測試，包括（最近）一個KUKA LBR800手臂，「在其末端效應器受到164.55（±1.09）Gy的大劑量輻射後停止工作，而導致故障的部件是一個光學編碼器。」有多少輻射，也就是說，一個1至2戈瑞劑量的整個身體會讓你急性放射病，並可能死亡，而8戈瑞通常只是直線上升死亡。這裡的目標不是殺死機器人（我的意思是，有點像），但正如梅格森·史密斯所說，「如果我們能找出機器人系統中的弱點，我們能解決這些問題嗎，我們能重新設計這些問題嗎，或者至少能理解它們什麼時候可能開始失敗？「現在他所要做的就是說服波士頓動力公司給他們派一個地點，讓他們可以一直幹掉，直到它倒下。」。The goal for Spot in the short term is fully autonomous radiation mapping, which seems very possible. It』ll also get tested with a wider range of sensor packages, and (happily for the robot) this will all take place safely back at home in the U.K. As far as Chernobyl is concerned, robots will likely have a substantial role to play in the near future. 「Ultimately, Chernobyl has to be taken apart and decommissioned. That’s the long-term plan for the facility. To do that, you first need to understand everything, which is where we come in with our sensor systems and robotic platforms,」 Megson-Smith tells us. 「Since there are entire swathes of the Chernobyl nuclear plant where people can’t go in, we』d need robots like Spot to do those environmental characterizations.」短期內Spot的目標是完全自主的輻射測繪，這似乎是非常可能的。它也將得到更廣泛的傳感器包測試，（很高興地為機器人）這將全部安全地回到英國的家中，就車諾比而言，機器人在不久的將來可能會扮演重要角色。「最終，車諾比必須被拆除並退役。這是該設施的長期計劃。要做到這一點，你首先需要了解一切，這是我們的傳感器系統和機器人平臺進來的地方，」梅格森史密斯告訴我們。「既然車諾比核電站的大片區域都是人們無法進入的，我們就需要像Spot這樣的機器人來完成這些環境描述。」
素材來源：
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/boston-dynamics-spot-chernobyl
https://www.bostondynamics.com/
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