Applications of a remotely controlled robot-car in the TPS tunnel

A remotely controlled robot-car named "PhotonBot" was developed to undertake inspection of the tunnel of Taiwan Photon Source during its operation. It is equipped with LiDAR to detect obstacles and SLAM, four cameras including a 360 degrees camera for surveillance, a thermal-imaging system to visualize the temperature distribution and to disclose abnormal hot spots, and a radiation dosimeter to survey the radiation distribution along the machine. It enabled to locate an abnormally heated flange that was related to beam instability at a large beam current; an installation error of the RF bridge between the flanges was deduced to increase the impedance that led to the heating. From the inside of the storage ring circle, the measurements of radiation showed that the radiation distribution is greater at the quadrupole magnets and smaller at the dipole magnets.