

IRobot sending robots to Japan to help with nuclear crisis.  - icey
http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/irobot-sending-packbots-and-warriors-to-fukushima

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jwr
Finally! I've been watching the news and wondering why they aren't using
aerial drones to get up-to-date video feeds and robots to access the dangerous
areas and at least _see_ what is going on there.

I mean, even the cheap (by military standards) Parrot AR.Drones could be used
to get some imagery, assuming wi-fi relays are set up first.

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moe
_robots to access the dangerous areas_

They would need to be hardened, otherwise the radiation messes up the
electronics within days.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VVx9gRS3ug#t=1m5s>

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curtis
Even if a robot lasted for only a few hours it could still be extremely
useful. If nothing else, it might allow the emergency workers to tell for sure
how much water is in those spent fuel pools.

~~~
moe
True. My wild guess is that they probably already know the state of the fuel-
pools from the helicopter flights - the roofs being blown off and all.

On the other hand, watching those Chernobyl documentaries is not exactly
faith-inducing. Considering Chernobyl was _one_ reactor going mad and
Fukushima is what, four? I don't even want to imagine what those 50 guys are
going through.

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rilindo
Wait, why is a _US_ company is sending Japan robots? Aren't the Japanese
decades ahead of everybody else on robotics?

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zeteo
The Japanese have a cultural fascination with humanoid robots. Unfortunately,
most useful robots at the moment are rather unimpressive looking and decidedly
not humanoid. Ergo, much of Japanese robotics research is closer to toy design
and production than to any other branch of engineering.

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kazuya
> The Japanese have a cultural fascination with humanoid robots.

If you are talking about pop culture, yes. However, non-humanoids don't make
news as they have already been part of Japanese culture. Even kids know cars,
toys, foods etc are made by robots.

As Estragon pointed out, Japan doesn't have robots suitable for such condition
as it didn't have urgent necessity.

In addition, the Fukushima power plants are very old and I think it was not
designed for inspection and repair by robots.

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jrockway
"Please inspect and clean Roomba's radiation sensors!"

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a1k0n
Are these things really radiation-hardened enough to go into a "hot zone"?
Won't that seriously mess with any semiconductors? Various manufacturers make
radiation-hardened microcontrollers and so forth for going into space, but
that's nothing compared to a nuclear reactor... or am I wrong? I guess you
could encase the motherboard in lead or something.

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mhb
Maybe they could also use something bigger:
<http://www.terramax.com/technology/the_brains.cfm>

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js2
See also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2342559>

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mkramlich
I was surprised they didn't have robots on site within 24 hours, if not
prepositioned there by default. We're talking Japan and we're talking about a
place with obviously potentially extremely hazardous environments where a
billion dollar budget is considered standard.

~~~
teyc
I was surprised they didn't request any generators from the army once theirs
were knocked out. It would have saved a lot of hassle.

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mkramlich
i love the idea of iRobot but my Roomba died a few months after I bought it
new. All it had to do was drive around on my carpet and clean it -- which it
did do a few times well. Hope and assume the models they send for the nuclear
plant are much more robust.

~~~
mturmon
iRobot also makes robots for applications like IED clearing:

<http://www.irobot.com/gi/ground/510_PackBot>

~~~
rdl
I wonder how many lives have been saved by the iRobot PackBots -- I've visited
the forward robot repair depots and seen them fix the obviously broken ones,
and each of those could have been another customer for our hospital. Probably
hundreds over the past decade in both theaters.

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obtino
They should've sent Megatron

