Robust Vision Using Retro Reflective Markers for Remote Handling in ITER

TL;DR

This paper presents a retro-reflective marker-based tracking system for remote handling in ITER, demonstrating reliable pose estimation with low-resolution cameras and outperforming stereo depth methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel retro-reflective marker-based version of 3D Node for pose estimation in ITER's remote handling tasks, enhancing reliability and performance.

Findings

Reliable pose estimation with a single low-resolution camera

Outperforms stereo depth estimation approaches

Potential to enable key remote handling operations in ITER

Abstract

ITER's working environment is characterized by extreme conditions, that deem maintenance and inspection tasks to be carried out through remote handling. 3D Node is a hardware/software module that extracts critical information from the remote environment during fine alignment tasks using an eye-in-hand camera system and updates the models behind the virtual reality-based remote handling platform. In this work we develop a retro-reflective marker-based version of 3D Node that estimates the pose of a planar target, the knuckle of the cassette locking system, using the markers attached to its surface. We demonstrate a pin-tool insertion task using these methods. Results show that our approach works reliably with a single low-resolution camera and outperforms the previously researched stereo depth estimation based approaches. We conclude that retro-reflective marker-based tracking has the potential to be a key enabler for remote handling operations in ITER.