The RAIN Hub innovation fund can be used to kick start collaborations between industry and RAIN research groups. Last year, Ioannis Havoutis, Maurice Fallon and Nick Hawes from the Oxford Robotics Institute (ORI) applied to fund a joint work program with Createc. Createc is an innovative company, based in Cumbria, developing new applications of imaging technology.
The aim of this project was to re-package and adapt Createc’s existing radiation sensor modules to be integrated with mobile robots from the ORI. Combining the systems will remove duplicated sensors, reducing the number of potential points of failure. The sensors & software from Createc’s N-Visage Recon unit perform SLAM, 3D characterisation and radiation characterisation concurrently to produce a 3D contamination map. ORI employs several robotic platforms that utilise similar sensor technologies (IMU, LIDAR & cameras) to navigate around challenging environments. This project integrated the radiation sensing & mapping components of the Createc N-Visage Recon with ORI’s robotic platforms by physically integrating the two and feeding the ORI sensor and localisation data to the cut down Createc system. The result was a robot that could map previously unreachable areas and a sensor that may be mounted onto many new platforms.
The success of this project has led to the team being awarded an Innovate UK project to continue working together. The Innovate project is just getting started, we look forward to seeing the progress they will make next.
