Speaker
Description
This work presents the research coordination and supervisory activities carried out within the NEFERTARI project, targeting the development of a robotic remote handling system for inspection and maintenance operations inside the RFX-mod2 fusion machine. The contribution spans the full engineering lifecycle, with direct involvement in requirement elicitation and formalization, conceptual definition of the kinematic and mechatronic architecture, and design of the overarching software architecture, alongside the supervision of a multidisciplinary research team covering mechanical design and software development.
The adopted methodology is grounded in a structured, requirement-driven engineering approach that systematically translates environmental, operational, and reactor-specific constraints into coherent technical specifications across all levels of system abstraction. The confined geometry environment of RFX-mod2 imposes stringent demands on system compactness, accessibility through limited ports, mechanical reliability, and remote operability in the absence of direct sensor feedback — constraints that governed both the kinematic concept and the software architecture strategy. The latter integrates flexible-body simulation, real-time control, collision avoidance based on distance-field representations, and immersive Digital Twin visualization within a modular framework supporting human-in-the-loop operation and operator training. The research activity culminated in the successful realization and experimental validation of the complete system, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed integrated approach and offering a generalizable methodological contribution to the field of robotics for confined and hazardous environments.