Synthetic viewing: comprehensive work representation, making remote work clearer to the operator

Maintenance work in fusion plants such as the ITER plant will be carried out fully remotely, without any direct view on to the work scene. The basic sources of information about the state of the work are video monitors. In a first development step, this viewing channel was enhanced by three-dimensional computer graphics controlled by signals of motion sensors (such as joint angle sensors) of the real maintenance devices. However, experience has shown that more information is required about the status of all pieces of equipment involved and about the status of the entire handling task, if the work is to be done properly. Viewing for remote handling applications needs to include the display of such status information in a suitable form. Of special importance in this sense is the representation of the work procedures on the computer display, enabling the operator to grasp at a glance the actual state of the work and the details about the subtask to be executed next. The tool providing this “synthetic” viewing but also task-suited to planning, training and controlling support for the operator is the remote handling workstation. The prototype of a remote handling workstation was successfully used in the first complete Karlsruhe experiment for in-torus handling.