Toshiba Nuclear Disaster Robot Missteps During Demonstration

 Disaster Robots

Toshiba has unveiled a four-legged quadraped inspection robot, which will carry out work at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where people cannot go. The newly developed robot comes equipped with a smaller wheeled robot that can be deployed to navigate hard-to-reach areas. The legged robot can negotiate stairs, uneven terrain, but did show some serious design flaws during the demonstration.

Toshiba unveiled a robot  week that it says can withstand high radiation and help in nuclear disasters like the one at Fukishima.  Since the disaster, the Japanese robotics industry has re-tasked in many areas to deal with the necessity of dealing with such conditions rather than focusing on entertainment robots, and due to the barrage of criticism.

Moreover, until Fukishima, the requirements of robotics dealing with radioactive environments had not been dealt with sufficiently.

Based on the demonstration by Toshiba though, it looks like the robots still require a lot of work, and are not quite ready for showtime or the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

The Toshiba four-legged robot can climb over debris and venture into radiated areas off-limits to human workers. One significant innovation, Toshiba said, is that its wireless network can be controlled in high radiation, automatically seeking better when reception becomes weak.

But the machine, which looks like an small refrigerator on wobbly metal legs, also appears prone to glitches. The robot took a jerky misstep during a demonstration to reporters, freezing with one leg up in the air. It had to be lifted by several people and rebooted.

The robot was also notably slow in climbing a flight of eight steps, cautiously lifting its legs one by one, and taking about a minute to go up each step.

With obstacles that aren't as even and predictable as steps, such as the debris at the plant, it may need as much as 10 minutes to figure out how to clear the object, Toshiba acknowledged.

Also if it ever falls, it will not be able to get up on its own.  This flaw must be overcome for the robot to succeed.  Furthermore this shows that the DARPPA Robotics Challenge's focus on humanoid robots for disaster conditions is appropriate.

Still, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it might use the robot to inspect the suppression chamber of the Fukushima plant, where a devastating meltdown took place after a mammoth tsunami slammed into northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011.

Toshiba began developing the robot after the disaster with hopes it would prove useful in helping to decommission the plant. No human has been able to enter the highly radiated chamber since the tsunami disaster.

"We need this to go in and first check what is there," said Toshiba Senior Manager Goro Yanase.

It was unclear when a decision on the robot's use would be made, according to TEPCO, which operates the nuclear plant.

Although what Toshiba showed was top-notch robotics, what the machine might be able to do appeared limited in the face of future disasters as complex as the one at Fukishima.  Toshiba says it will continue to improve the robots by adding radiation shielding, water-proofing, and more advanced control behaviors for dealing with other kinds of situations.



SOURCE  CBC

By 33rd Square

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