||Personnel Protection through Reconnaissance Robotics at Superfund Remedial Sites.
||Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, OH. Risk Reduction Engineering Lab.
Occupational safety and health;
Air pollution monitoring;
Computer aided control systems;
||Most EPA libraries have a fiche copy filed under the call number shown. Check with individual libraries about paper copy.
||Investigation, mitigation, and clean-up of hazardous materials at Superfund sites normally require on-site workers to perform hazardous and sometimes potentially dangerous functions. Such functions include site surveys and the reconnaissance for airborne and buried toxic environmental contaminants. Workers conducting on-site air monitoring risk dermal, ocular and inhalation exposure to hazardous chemicals, while those performing excavations also risk in addition the potential exposure to fire, explosion, and other physical injury. EPA's current efforts to protect its workers and mitigate these risks include the use of robotic devices. Using robots offers the ultimate in personnel protection by removing the worker from the site of potential exposure. The paper describes the demonstration of a commercially-available robotic platform modified and equipped for air monitoring and the ongoing research for the development of a ground penetrating radar (GPR) system to detect buried chemical waste drums. These robotic devices can be ultimately routinely deployed in the field for the purpose of conducting inherently safe reconnaissance activities during Superfund/SARA remedial operations.
||Pub. in Jnl. of Air and Waste Management Association, v42 n3 p341-345 Mar 92. See also PB90-134164.
|NTIS Title Notes
||68C; 68G; 68A; 57U; 41C
||PC A02/MF A01