Motor controller radiation tolerance experiments

Recently, radiation-hardened embedded systems are sought for robots working under high-radiation environments such as the Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl nuclear power plants. Recent news reports have described a region with 650 Sv/h radiation outside of containment vessels at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Even in such heavy radiation environments, functioning robots are required. This paper therefore presents radiation-hardened motor controllers used for robots. The radiation tolerances of motor controllers were evaluated using irradiation by a
⁶⁰
Co gamma source.