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In the aftermath of a radiological dispersal device (RDD) or dirty bomb explosion one of the priorities of health and safety efforts is to characterize the radiation contamination in the affected area including ground zero, which could be in very high radiation area where measurements by human cannot be performed. The Nevada Nuclear Security Site (NNSS) at Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland has designed, developed, and deployed a couple of remote-controlled robots to mount a 4” x 4” x 2” sodium iodide scintillator about (~0.6 m) for radiological contamination mapping that can work in high radiation dose area. The device is most useful in large area contamination characterization and detecting invisible embedded sub-micron particulate debris with gamma radioactivity from surface/subsurface up to a depth of 3” underground for forensic work. The system employs a configurable four wheel drive All Terrain Robot from SuperDroid Robots. The robot comes with a 24-inch x 24-inch aluminum chassis to house the four motors, motor driver, wheels, and batteries. The 10-inch all terrain pneumatic wheels are powered by Model IG52-04 24 VDC 136 RPM gear motors. This device development project provided a versatile and robust platform for deployment of ground sensors to collect, and document radiation monitoring data with meta data from multiple modality (still video images, gamma neutron images). By deploying a number of these in the field for both Preventative Radiological Nuclear Detection (PRND) operations and Consequence Management (CM) monitoring purpose it supports a gamut of NNSA emergency response operations. Future work will involve establishing communications between these robotic platforms using radios like MPU5 and resident third-party software to provide multiple algorithms based on Bayesian decision making.
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