The Davros III supervisory control system

Magnox Electric's Remote Operations Branch deploy a wide variety of remote inspection and maintenance tools into nuclear plant in order to perform a variety of tasks. In recent years much progress has been made on low-level control of individual manipulator axes, and a parallel need has emerged for a supervisory system to assist the operator in the control of the whole system. Some requirements are: 1) to improve operator control of systems; 2) to simplify software maintenance and version control; 3) to reduce the likelihood of damage to manipulators; 4) to assist with rehearsals and simulations. Davros III is a PC software system which has been developed over a number of years to address these requirements. In a single program capable of being configured for a wide variety of applications, it provides a technique for following pretaught routes, a comprehensive and fully configurable interlock system and several different facilities for simulation. (author)