Microwave-Powered Robotic Vehicle for CERN LHC Inspection

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, laying in a tunnel 27km in circumference 175m beneath the French-Swiss borders near Geneva, Switzerland (Fig. 1). We are designing a robotic vehicle to inspect the interior of the beam pipe. Pipe access points are places every 3.3km and the vehicle is required to be able to reach at least half that distance.

(Fig. 1a) Overall schematic of CERN and LHC
(Fig. 1a) Overall schematic of CERN and LHC


(Fig. 1b) The circumference of LHC is 27km!
(Fig. 1b) The circumference of LHC is 27km!


The vehicle will be wirelessly powered by 5GHz microwaves, effectively exploiting the pipe itself as a custom-made waveguide (Fig. 2). The incoming microwave radiation will be received by the vehicle's onboard antenna and subsequently rectified and regulated to 5V and 3V by a hybrid microwave-DC circuit. The vehicle will also be equipped with a small DC motor for locomotion and an onboard camera for image acquisition. The vehicle's "brain" is a tiny gumstix motherboard (www.gumstix.com) running a full linux kernel based on the arm achitecture (Fig. 3).

(Fig. 2a) The beam pipe is made out of non-standard steel, 34mm in height and around 46mm wide, copper platted on the inside
(Fig. 2a) The beam pipe is made out of non-standard steel, 34mm in height and around 46mm wide, copper platted on the inside


(Fig. 2b) Actual image of the pipe in the accelerator setup.
(Fig. 2b) Actual image of the pipe in the accelerator setup.


(Fig. 3) The
(Fig. 3) The "brain" of the vehicle: a tiny gumstix motherboard running an arm-architecture linux kernel.


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