Robotic Arm Design for High Risk Radioactive Environments

Quality Function Deployment(QFD) Results emphasisng customer requirements and the engineering characteristics that would satisfy cutomer requirements.

Customer Requirements:

Radiation Resistant
Simplify Arm Design
External Power Supply
Low Cost

Engineering Characteristics:

Radiation Resistance
Useful Life
Robot Weight
Robot Arm Load Capacity
Robot Arm Material Strength

Control Strategy:

Servos and Step motors
Arduino Code
Open Source
Large Community
Aftermarket products/kits avaiable servos
Lightweight
Limited rotational range steppers
More torque/size
Continuous rotation and two-position control

Risk Management of the new Robotic Design using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FEMA)

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FEMA) was conducted on the final design in order to explore any potential risk of failure during services and have all changes needed to eliminate or reduce any of them. The final FEMA analysis table and plot shown below indicate safe operations for both mechanical and control components. Severity and frequency of occurrences of important events are within the negligible risk free zone