Challenges

Passive Gamma Emission Tomography (PGET) is a technology that is used by IAEA Safeguards to verify the number of fuel pins in a spent nuclear fuel assembly. In the reconstructed image, fuel pins appear as bright spots and missing-pin locations appear as dark regions. The challenge seeks improving methods for automated processing and analysis of PGET data.

Participants are invited to come up with novel ways to visualise, analyse and explore the provided data. The precise nature of the software solution to the challenge is deliberately left open to invite as many novel approaches as possible, but may involve one or more of the following:

• Novel software for visualizing the material damage represented by the data files in a way that aids its qualitative and quantitative assessment.
• New software tools to rapidly and reliably identify, classify and quantify new patterns and structures of particular kinds in the data sets.
• Efficient algorithms to depict and summarise the statistical distribution of atom displacements and to analyse the effect of impact energy on this distribution.

Some of the most common tasks undertaken by the IAEA inspectors involve making repetitive measurements in areas that can be difficult to access, or with elevated radiation levels. This is a domain where robotic could play a role, not only to improve the working conditions of the inspectors but also to enhance the consistency of the IAEA measurements. Two categories of robotic platforms are specifically considered for this technology challenge:

• Challenge Category 1: Small Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV)
• Challenge Category 2: Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV)