Telerobotics minimise exposure to ionising radiation
The PURESAFE (Preventing human intervention for increased safety in infrastructures emitting ionizing radiation) project was an Initial Training Network for the training of young researchers, funded by the EU through its Marie Curie Actions programme. The project’s aim was to facilitate the integration of telerobotics with systems engineering (SE) for the cost-efficient life-cycle management of scientific facilities that produce ionising radiation. The consortium comprised universities, international research organisations and industries that trained early-stage researchers (ESRs) in SE. Project partners hired 15 highly-qualified ESRs from multidisciplinary fields using an international recruitment process. They were trained in the research and technological development of scientific facilities, knowledge-intensive products (such as nuclear fusion) and services (such as project management). ESRs worked on addressing challenges associated with integrating telerobotics using SE in state-of-the-art scientific facilities such as the European Organization for Nuclear Research (commonly known as CERN) and the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research. This open SE framework will be made available in professionally edited e-documents and e-book formats as well as a commercial paper textbook. Several international workshops, conferences, poster sessions and presentations were held to disseminate project outcomes on telerobotics, SE and remote handling (RH) research. Information concerning the PURESAFE final conference can be viewed online. Project partners also designed a systems engineering (SE) framework suited to scientific facilities and systems (SFS) that are subject to ionizing radiations. It incorporated three characteristics: participative environments, lean thinking and open source, and every ESR contributed to this final objective. The PURESAFE Lean Systems Engineering Framework was released at the PURESAFE Final Conference in a form of OpenSE. A printed booklet (OpenSE v1.0) was given to every registered participant, and the OpenSE Framework can be currently accessed online.
Keywords
Ionizing radiation, PURESAFE, telerobotics, Initial Training Network, systems engineering, early stage researchers, remote handling, scientific facilities and systems
