Pioneer is a remote reconnaissance system for structural analysis of the Chornobyl Unit 4 reactor building. Its major components are

• a teleoperated mobile robot for deploying sensor and sampling payloads,
• a mapper for creating photorealistic 3D models of the building interior,
• a coreborer for cutting and retrieving samples of structural materials, and
• a suite of radiation and other environmental sensors.

The Pioneer robot, shown here during its May 27th demonstration outside the Unit 4 Shelter, is scheduled for deployment in late summer 1999.

The project is sponsored by the US Department of Energy and NASA and is a collaboration of

• Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Consortium,
• RedZone Robotics,
• Westinghouse's Science and Technology Center,
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Robotics & Exploration Technology Group,
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Machine Vision & Tracking Sensors Group,
• NASA Ames Research Center's Intelligent Mechanisms Group,
• the University of Iowa's Graphical Representation of Knowledge Lab,
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Automation and Robotics Group,
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Robotics and Process Systems Division, and
• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Computers have been provided by Silicon Graphics Inc.

You are the person to visit this site since March 20, 1998.