Survey on the use of robots / unmanned systems in scenarios involving radiological or nuclear threats

This is the third deliverable of task three of our European reference network for critical infrastructure protection (ERNCIP) thematic group for radiological and nuclear threats to critical infrastructure. This is the only report for this year in this task about remote-controlled radiation measurements and sampling using unmanned systems. We designed questions for a survey with experts from the radioactive and nuclear materials (RN) and robotics communities that we circulated through different channels, such as mailing lists and professional social media groups. In this report, we present the questionnaire and then discuss the outcome of the survey that we conducted this year to raise public interest in this topic and to get more insight and additional views from experts in this field and related subjects. One further aim was to obtain information from the experts and to bring the different communities of roboticists and RN experts together. We succeeded in getting information from scientists, especially from the robotics community, as they are well represented in the answers, but we lack answers from industries and end-user communities. Most of the respondents agreed on the scenarios that we identified in 'Possible scenarios for radiation measurements and sampling using unmanned systems'. About additional sensors, most people suggested including position and time to radiation measurements. The answers on bottlenecks and future topics point to robots' manoeuvrability, autonomy and communication as well as decontamination and human-robot interaction.