Drone-based monitoring of safety-relevant areas of accelerator facilities

Peer Stelldinger, HAW Hamburg
Norbert Tesch, DESY
Tim Tiedemann, HAW Hamburg

DESY has a large number of accelerators that are either located underground or have earth walls above the tunnel facilities. The earth walls serve as shielding from radiation and ensure safe operation for all persons located near the accelerator facilities. Therefore, the integrity of these shieldings is very important and must be monitored regularly or any type of excavation or earthwork must be reported to and approved by the Radiation Protection Group in advance. Both the approval process and the monitoring are not yet supported by any technical measures. In order to further increase safety here, the monitoring of the above-mentioned safety areas of the accelerators by one (or more) drone(s) by means of photography and image comparison with subsequent detection of non-critical and critical differences on a daily basis is envisaged. The critical differences are then to be automatically reported immediately to the radiation protection group so they can promptly investigate the situation on site and quickly mitigate any dangerous situations. The aim is to further reduce the risk posed by uncontrolled excavations or earthworks by means of a regular technical measure and thus to make the operation of the accelerators even safer.