Hydro-Quebec Inspection Robot for PHYS Feeder Pipes Supports

Abstract

This paper will briefly present Gentilly-2 Ispection program for the PHTS feeder pipes supports. The focus of the paper will be on the Inspection Robot technology developed by Hydro Quebec for that purpose and on highlights of the '97 to 2000 outage Inspection campaigns. The Inspection Robot consists of a probe installed at the end of a positioning arm with 5 degrees of freedom (d.o.f.) operating up to 45m (150') from the control and data-recording station The control station provides the robot operator with auxiliary camera viewpoints and position f-ck of the robotic arm. A typical probe has 2 axes of rotation and is equipped with a video colour camera, powerful lighting, and optionally a laser to do point to point measurements. The mob design enables to reconfigure the positioning arm to meet the requirements of a new inspection site. The main advantages of using this equipment is a major reduction in radiation exposure, The high quality of the data collected and inspection data archiving for further analysis and reports.