Characteristics of Operator to Malfunctions of Multi-jointed Manipulator Arm during Maintenance and Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities

With a view to determine a safe speed the limit of a manipulator arm, several experiments was performed with a multi-jointed manipulator in maintenance and decommissioning tasks of nuclear facilities. Under the simulated emergency conditions, which were generated with random combinations of manipulator arm speed, failure probability and failure type, response characteristics of human operators to various malfunctions of a manipulator arm were measured in terms of reaction time, number of false alarm, and number of misses. This paper demonstrated that failure type, manipulator axes and manipulator arm speed has significant effects on human reaction time. As a whole the reaction time was slightly increased with manipulator arm speed, which is showed somewhat different pattern due to failure type. The reaction time to an axis acting on a workpiece directly, which could flex and extend, was fastest and much more its standard deviation was small. Various factors which may affect safe speed were also described.