Nuclear plant manipulator system

A method for controlling a manipulator of a nuclear plant manipulator system including a manipulator with an image acquisition device and a remotely-controlled drive, wherein the image acquisition device is configured to capture image data, a remote-operating device configured to remotely control the manipulator, an object counter configured to be incremented or decremented, and an analysis device configured to receive the image data captured by the image acquisition device, and evaluate the received image data, wherein the method comprises:

• positioning the manipulator at a defined starting position in an area of use of a nuclear plant;
• manually controlling the manipulator along a path by the remote-operating device;
• acquiring continuously the image data by the image acquisition device;
• analyzing continuously the image data of the data acquisition device such that respective objects located along the path are automatically identified by the analysis device, and depending on a direction the manipulator moves along the path to pass an object, the object counter is incremented or decremented;
• and
• providing a current value of the object counter to the remote-operating device, so that for the manual control of the manipulator, a reference on the manipulator's current position in an area of use of the nuclear plant is given to the operator.