A preview of the European Commission TELEMAN programme for telerobotics research

TELEMAN was a programme of research and training for the European Atomic Energy Community under the Second and Third Framework Programmes in the field of remote handling in hazardous or disordered nuclear environments. The strategic objective was to develop advanced telerobots that respond to the needs of the nuclear industry, including maintenance, decommissioning and accident management. The emphasis was on improved nuclear safety through reducing the radiation exposure of human operators. The first set of 16 multi-partner contracts related to the development of components and sub-systems and their environmental tolerance. The second set of five projects integrated results from the first projects into research machines for demonstration, testing and evaluation in realistic conditions. The programme ended with the testing of the major TELEMAN research projects in industrial locations.