Incident scenario at Zwentendorf nuclear power plant: robotics capabilities on display at EnRicH hackathon

In mid-June, a robotics team from the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien participated in the EnRich Hackathon at the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant together with the robot developer company Taurob. Some students of the master program Robotics Engineering visited them during the event.

For one week, teams from all over the world came together at the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant, which never went into operation, to check the current state of development of their robotic systems and to train for emergencies. This year’s task was particularly exciting and red-hot, as the risk of an accident cannot be completely ruled out in any nuclear power plant – as demonstrated, for example, by the recent examples at the nuclear power plants in Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan. In such cases, robotics comes into play: After all, in the event of a disaster, many of the required operations cannot be performed by humans, but only by robots, due to the high radiation load.

Three disciplines: Infrastructure, Manipulation and Search And Rescue

The EnRicH Hackathon focuses on the comparison of performances in order to show the capabilities and deficits of robotics in an incident scenario. Participants competed in three disciplines: Infrastructure, Manipulation and Search And Rescue. This impressive event takes place every two years, and this year again a robotics team from the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien including Lucas Muster, Michael Schebek, Simon Schwaiger, Martin Stohanzl and Wilfried Kubinger participated together with Taurob. Wilfried Wöber and Andrea Ojdanic were also on site.

FFG Forte Program with UAS Technikum Wien and Austrian Armed Forces

This activity is part of the UGV-ABC-Probe project funded by the FFG within the FFG-FORTE program, which is carried out by the Departments Electronic Engineering and Industrial Engineering of UAS Technikum Wien together with the company Taurob and the Austrian Armed Forces. Within the scope of the project, a novel sampling device is to be developed. This will make it possible for the first time to take solid, liquid and gaseous samples of NBC hazardous substances by means of a robot and, if possible, to analyze them directly on the robot.