The Grads go to the Olympus Rover Trials

Back in November 2021, a group of intrepid graduates accepted the call from the UK Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (UKSEDS) and gathered to work on a project that would take them to MARS! (Via Stevenage and Harwell)

The first critical task at hand was to come up with a name. After much deliberation, it was settled on "They See Me Roving" or TSMR for short. Then after that most difficult of choices, we had to design a Rover capable traversing the terrain of Mars and safely retrieve a set of samples. Working against strict limits on weight, size, and numerous other requirements, this was no easy feat. The graduates organised themselves into groups dealing with different Work Packages including: Control & Electronics, Power, Autonomy & Software, Propulsion & Chassis, and Manipulator. Leading the effort was Jan Sprengel as Project Manager, who kept all the groups in check and kept a keen eye on what needed to be done and when it needed to be done by, putting our Systems Engineering training to good use.

By December, the graduates had a Preliminary Design to submit to UKSEDS for review. The result of much research and design work, it was a bit rough but showed we had a solid concept of the rover.

CAD model of the TSMR Rover

The judges at UKSEDS then greenlit the team to continue to a final design. A lot of features were refined as the design faced the realities of component procurement and manufacture. Faced with a limited budget, it was decided to construct the rover from 3D printed parts on-site. As parts were prototyped and improved, the rover ended up being manufactured in stages, which resulted in the “distinctive” colour scheme of the final design.

The actual rover, with trademark multicolour aesthetic, settling well into its natural environment of "Mars"

Held together by many M5 screws and the hopes and dreams of the graduate team, the rover made its way to Stevenage on the 6th of August for performance testing at the Airbus Mars Yard in Stevenage. There were 9 teams competing to score the highest with their rover, each with their own approaches, including one made simply from cardboard. However, upon initial set-up, it was found that our rover was facing technical issues. After a day of troubleshooting the electrical and control system, we tried hardwiring a connection over ethernet cable, yet the rover just sat stoically at the start line, despite it having worked brilliantly the previous day. Sadly, another example of the well-known Murphy's Law at play.

We then sat on the observation deck and watched as other rovers similarly faced a gauntlet of technical issues including getting themselves stuck in sand, being unable to climb the rocks, and difficulties with manipulating the sample collection tools. Eventually, even the best performing rover only picked up a single sample before returning. We nevertheless cheered all their brave efforts and took away many lessons learnt on rover design. 

Some of the elite TSMR rover team of graduate engineers with their rover (front), and the slightly bigger Airbus rover (back)

The next day was spent at RAL Space over at the Harwell Campus. The big event of the day was a vibration test where the rovers were affixed to a test rig and shaken rigorously. A slow-motion video of the test shows our rover bravely held out for a long time, but eventually lost the manipulator, and then a wheel.

The rover is bolted down to the test rig, to be given the much-feared "vibe test"

Overall, the team was very proud to have made a rover on such a short timescale, and even though it didn’t manage to move on the Mars Yard, we got a lot out of the process of planning, designing, and building the rover from start to finish in only a few months. Even so, the design still was commended by the judges. They particularly liked the custom PCB, the inventive “sand-sweeper” sample collection tool, and the awesome digital twin model of the rover (please see the video below), so they awarded the team with the ORT Innovation Prize!

The ORT Innovation Prize - a 1:1 scale 3D-printed model of a Mars sample tube 

What next for our little rover? The team are hoping to repair the damage, get it better than before, and use it to showcase our brilliant engineering efforts on Outreach events. So, the rover will rise again!

 

 

Inspiring the ITER generation - CCFE's Fusion Workshop

by Sarah Medley

It’s a really exciting time for fusion research right now – we’re building the next-generation tokamak ITER and we’re working towards a demonstration power station (known as DEMO), to put fusion electricity on the grid before 2050. However, the dream of fusion as the ultimate energy source will never become reality without one essential ingredient: people! We need people to continue the research, to operate ITER and design DEMO! So it is essential that the fusion community considers how to inspire this next generation of fusion scientists and engineers - often referred to as “the ITER generation”.

Fortunately, CCFE already has a strong outreach programme dedicated to this goal. We give tours of our JET and MAST fusion experiments to A-level and university students, and we take the Sun Dome science roadshow into primary schools. However, the graduates realised that there was a ‘gap in the market’ when it comes to secondary school students, so we decided to develop something specifically aimed at inspiring GCSE-age students to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (a.k.a. STEM) subjects to A-level and beyond!

And behold, the CCFE Fusion Workshop was born. Developed entirely by CCFE graduates, the Fusion Workshop is an interactive activity session that uses hands-on science and engineering demonstrations to bring the real-world applications of STEM subjects to life in the context of fusion research. What exactly does that mean, you ask? Well basically we assemble a crack team of graduates, pile them into a van with a load of demonstration kits and send them off to a local school to invade a GCSE physics lesson.
 

The Fusion Workshop team. From left to right: Jim (materials scientist), Alastair (physicist), Greg (mechanical engineer), Kim (control engineer), Sarah and Alex (physicists).

 School lessons only last for an hour, so the Fusion Workshop is designed to be a snappy and exciting insight into the world of fusion research and why it’s so awesome, all delivered in less than 60 minutes. We kick off the session with a short intro to fusion and CCFE, before diving into the best bit – the demos! This is where the students get to have a great time playing with lasers, magnets, expanding marshmallows, and not forgetting the robotic arm chocolate relay race! Of course, it’s not just about having fun, as the graduates are on hand to provide easily understandable explanations of how each demo relates to a particular element of fusion research, whether it’s plasma diagnostics or vacuum technology. So the demos all aim to show how the science taught at school is actually applied in the real world of fusion research! We wrap up the workshop with a quick chat about how to become a scientist or engineer - and why it’s such an exciting career choice! - then we pack up the van and drive off into the sunset (or back to CCFE), happy in the knowledge that the students all had fun and are hopefully now considering STEM career routes as a result of the session.

Of course, this is how we see it, but what do the students think? Well, the feedback speaks for itself – after trialling the workshop with a local year 10 class, we received comments such as “I loved it and it just made me want to go to university and be an engineer” and “I am hoping to become a physicist when I'm older and this has really enthused me”. One member of the class has even applied for work experience at CCFE, as a direct result of our workshop.

So you put a marshmallow inside a vacuum chamber, switch on the pump, and then….? Greg and Sarah show these two year 10 students what happens and why.

 

Future remote handling engineers?

Unsurprisingly, adults enjoy the workshop session just as much as school students. We witnessed this first hand last month at a networking event that we co-hosted with Science Oxford, where 25 teachers and STEM Ambassadors from across the country came to CCFE to experience the workshop for themselves! This was an excellent opportunity to give us invaluable feedback, which we can now use to refine the workshop and develop it further.
The plan is to continue to work closely with teachers and schools to make sure that the students really are getting the most out of the workshop, and then it can be officially rolled out later this year!


Jim explains to teachers how the GCSE physics concepts of reflection and refraction are applied to JET’s essential laser diagnostics.

Alex explains to teachers how we use ferrofluids in the workshop to illustrate magnetism to students. Magnets are the most essential part of any tokamak!

So, what started out as an enthusiastic group of graduates with a vision is now a very real project with a lot of momentum, and we’re super excited about it. The workshop also has great potential to incorporate other demos in future, for example other graduate projects such as the table-top plasma device or RIFT, so watch this space! Whatever happens, we hope that the CCFE Fusion Workshop will continue to inspire young scientists and engineers for years to come!

Plasma on the Table (with video!)

CCFE’s graduates Matti Coleman, Alex Cackett, James Buchanan, Steph Hall, Andy Busse and Harry Robinson have been making a table-top plasma device with the aim to show it at Science Fairs and in schools. Here is their account of the first time they turned it on… don't forget to have a look at the video at the bottom of this post! 

On an otherwise uneventful Tuesday afternoon, a new experiment is being run at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE). In a dark, dusty laboratory buried deep in the bowels of the K1 building, the lights are dimmed, breaths are held and the air is thick with tense anticipation.

A dial on a power supply is cautiously turned up by lead electrical engineer and bearded Renaissance man Andy Busse; 500V then 1kV, steadily onwards and upwards. At first, there is nothing, just silence and the dim flicker of dust particles moving through the solitary beam of light entering through the small obscured window near the ceiling. A single bead of sweat drops from the brow of project manager and chief mechanical engineer, Matti Coleman, and explodes upon the dirty floor. The grim spectre of failure looms heavily above the room. But then, sparks appear, small and faint at first, then brighter, and gradually a dense ball of light forms in the centre of a bell jar which, in the middle of the room, is the focus of all attention. Success! A plasma!  

Breaths are released and the tension falls away as hands are shook and pats on the back are heartily given and received in the knowledge that several months of hard work (well reasonably hard, there was tons of paperwork) were not in vain.

This experiment marks a new endeavour for CCFE. While all of the other main plasma devices on the site are based on magnetic confinement, the trapping of charged particles using complicated toroidal helical magnetic fields, and are geared towards the development of fusion energy, this new device, which will not produce any fusion at all, is geared solely towards looking really awesome. 

‘Inertial Electrostatic Confinement’ (IEC) devices, known colloquially as ‘Fusors’ and frequently fabricated by internet enthusiasts in their garages, simply use two metal grids with a large potential difference across them to create and trap a plasma. The large electric field between the two grids accelerates ions towards the centre where they collide and can, in principle, initiate fusion reactions if the potential difference is large enough and if deuterium gas is used.  

Fusors have been shown not to be capable of generating net power and so the device being built by the crack team of CCFE graduates is for the sole purpose of engaging the public in science, and helping to give them a visually stunning demonstration of how electric and magnetic fields can be used to trap charged particles.

Having successfully completed a trial run in the laboratory the team now intends to design and construct a portable demonstration stand for the Fusor so that it can be taken to fairs and schools. It will only be run with air or inert gases such as Neon or Argon, which also make colourful plasmas, and not deuterium due to the belief that irradiating children with fusion neutrons might be bad and may not lead to the development of awesome superpowers. Work continues... 

Authors: James Buchanan and Matti Coleman
Pictures and video: A classical spherical grid is being tested, along with a toroidal one; the latter aims to imitate its bigger brother, the Joint European Torus (JET), also on site.

 

Playing on the RIFT

The CCFE (Culham Centre for Fusion Energy) graduate scheme includes doing a project outside of the normal placements. It allows the graduates to gain skills that otherwise wouldn’t necessarily be accessible. For example, physicists might be able to do some engineering, and engineers might be able to do some programming etc.

The RIFT (Remote Interactive Feedback Technology) project will be one of the most fun graduate projects when it is completed, as it will create a public facing interactive demonstration of the feedback technology used on the remote handling manipulator known as Mascot. Remote handling is used on JET (Joint European Torus) for in-vessel maintenance and upgrade operations because the radioactive vessel poses a risk to humans. Mascot (the Slave) is set-up to work with a controller (the Master), the operator manipulates the Master and the Slave mimics the action. When the Slave reacts against an object the force of that is mirrored back through the Master allowing the operator to feel the object as if they were touching it. This is hugely beneficial for JET because it means the torus can be accessed without exposing any workers to radiation. Any replacements, repairs or adjustments that are required should be possible. One of the training steps for Mascot operators is to use this technology to play Jenga remotely, relying on the high level of touch needed for the game.

The goal of the project is to promote the current remote handling capabilities at CCFE as well as the future remote handling centre of excellence known as RACE which is being developed on site. This goal will be achieved by creating an interactive demonstration of this feedback technology.

To demonstrate the Mascot technology we will be using two relatively low cost haptic devices called Novint Falcons normally used as PC gaming controllers. Haptic devices allow a level of force feedback that creates the feeling of actually interacting with something which you see on a screen. To a certain extent touch screen phones use haptic feedback when a button is pressed and the phone vibrates. The Falcons will be set-up in the same configuration as the Mascot and its controller, in a Master-Slave configuration which is standard for haptic feedback loops.

We will then think of some fun games to play with this set up, which the public will be able to try when they visit CCFE. We might get to play Jenga like the real Mascot or at least move some objects around remotely.

There is a dream team of graduates working on this endeavour from different backgrounds. We have Mechanical and Electrical engineers and general day-dreamers just like the original Italian teams that would have created the first Mascot back in the 60s. The team have interests in programming, electronics, haptic feedback, and remote handling.

The project is still in its early stages but with a little luck and a lot of push this project could be up and running soon. Then we can all play remote Jenga, just like the Mascot operators do in training to develop their coordination in a low risk situation.

Watch this space for future updates...

Project team:

·         Project Manager/Mechanical Engineer – Keelan Keogh

·         Control Engineer – Jibin James

·         Mechanical Engineer – Jason Hess

·         Electrical Engineer – Steven Wray

·         Electrical Engineer – Zain Ul-Abidin

Author: Keelan Keogh

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