We are delighted to congratulate the project team on the successful award of funding under the ACORN programme. The team is led by Dr Emma Li a Senior Lecturer at the School of Computer Science in Glasgow. The award provides a strong foundation to progress the project’s objectives and supports continued collaboration and innovation.
Inspection and monitoring within hazardous nuclear environments are frequently constrained by limited access, poor visibility and reliance on indirect observation, leading to uncertainties and increased operational risk. These challenges are particularly evident in underwater environments at Sellafield, such as ponds and tanks, and in glovebox environments at UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), where current inspection approaches provide limited spatial understanding and little quantitative information.
This proposal focuses on translating existing 3D visualisation and reconstruction capability to active onsite deployment in two priority environments, building on RAICo-funded research previously demonstrated at RAICo1, UKAEA and UK-RAS events. While further development will be undertaken to enhance 3D reconstruction in underwater settings and to refine visual fidelity and geometric accuracy, the primary emphasis is on enabling deployments through integration with deployment platforms and workflows, supported by targeted validation in representative nuclear environments.
Through collaboration with Sellafield Ltd, UKAEA, RAICo and FIS360 Ltd, the project will deliver deployment-focused validation in underwater and glovebox environments. The outcome will be a refined and validated 3D visualisation capability that reduces reliance on assumptions, improves confidence in planning activities and operational decision-making, and provides a clear pathway from research to routine operational use.
