A report on a project to inspect a contaminated nuclear power station, from the Guardian. Excerpt:
The university has built a "hexacopter", which has six separate rotary engines. It is also equipped with lidar (light detection and ranging), remote-sensing technology that uses lasers to create detailed three-dimensional images which can be viewed from any angle.
"The hexacopter can scan the interior surface. It is can be autonomous and it will fly for about 20 minutes," said Seager.
"The craft was designed for the mapping of the interiors of buildings. Its USP is mapping inside buildings that may have been contaminated, or are difficult to access by other means. The model has potential military spin-offs. In Afghanistan, you could send it into an building and do a survey so you'd know who and what was inside."
Who goes in and charges the batteries?
Comments
Doesn't sound like that power plant is in meltdown. I suspect that the drone will survive. There's a big difference between ionizing radiation, and contamination. ;-)
They determined that they would use 'Robots' to clean it up, but the radiation destroyed their electronic circuits. The robot team didn't want to admit failure. So the project used what are euphemistically termed 'Bio Robots'
Actually they tried using robots to clean up the Chernobyl disaster, but like Jack said, their electronics got fried. Fast. Several were used and if i remember correctly the one that work the longest was for 15 minutes before it committed suicide (jumped of the building). And at least one, as i recall, malfunctioned instantaneously when it was exposed to high levels of radioactivity.
Thanks for the clarification Jack.
Radiation destroying electronics is the mane problem.
Yes so they all die in horrible pain.
There's a reason why the Russians used men instead of robots to remove radioactive debris in Chernobyl.