IRobot sending robots to Japan to help with nuclear crisis. | Hacker News Reader

IRobot sending robots to Japan to help with nuclear crisis.

m.spectrum.ieee.org

43 pointsicey20 comments

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Not when it comes to hostile environments. The US has a much greater need than the rest of the planet in that niche.

Don't worry, I'm sure that after this disaster is over, the Japanese will build a better robot for this situation.

Necessity is the mother of invention. We're fighting two wars where IED's are a big problem so we happen to be better prepared at this time.

Quote from the CEO of iRobot Colin Angle c.a. 2005: "I think humanoid robots are interesting and economically irrelevant for the foreseeable future."

http://news.cnet.com/The-leader-of-the-robot-pack---page-2/2...

To be sure, the Japanese have built some pretty amazing humanoid robots, and a lot of their emphasis seems to be trying to build things to help with caring for an aging population rather than detonating ieds, but it also seems that none of these projects so far have gotten past the proof of concept stage.

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

iRobot also makes robots for applications like IED clearing:

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

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.

They should've sent Megatron

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