MASCOT 6: Achieving high dexterity tele-manipulation with a modern architectural design for fusion remote maintenance

Highlights: • A novel heterogeneous, kinematically similar telemanipulator design architecture is presented. • A simulation is developed which is able to pre-assess performance of likely prototype telemanipulator actuators. • Sensitivity analysis is performed in order to assess impact of changing components on overall mechatronic performance. • Critical evaluation of prototypes is conducted successfully using a dedicated test facility. - Abstract: The MASCOT system is a dexterous tele-manipulator robot which is well established and proven through thousands of successful hours of operation in remote reconfiguration of the Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak. The system is well suited to the types of complex remote maintenance tasks that will be found in fusion devices such as JET, ITER, and DEMO in the future. Over the past 3 years, a programme of work has been undertaken to upgrade the MASCOT system, which has been driven primarily by the need to replace obsolete components and improve reliability. The quality of the tele-manipulator system's performance can be defined in terms of transparency and fidelity, which can be further attributed to system parameters such as bandwidth, reflected inertia, friction components, current sensitivity, and transmission smoothness. As the required performance is extremely demanding, significant analysis and optimisation has been required in order to approach a suitable solution. We present the state of the MASCOT Version 6 technology including, for the first time, an overview of the system design and features as well as the design and results of performance characterisation simulations and experiments. The state of the programme, and plans for future work will also be presented.