Where Were the Robots In Fukushima Crisis?

mdsolar writes "When the huge Fukushima nuclear disaster first started, many on Slashdot were calling for robots to come to the rescue. This is the story of why our overlords were caught napping. Not to worry though, ¥1 billion has been allocated to correct the robot problem. They will be properly welcomed."

Standard robots are not very good with radiation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear disasters are not the only use case of such robots. Fire-fighting, post-earthquake/terror attack assistance etc. apart from the shielding, not much changes.

But the shielding is important. All your electronics and your sensors will go harvoc there. To get anything working you most likely need totally different designs.

Camaras (both analog and digital) are likely to also 'see' the radiation and thus no longer see anything, and while you can shield the inner core electronics, roboters without sensors or actors do not make much sense.

If you have to deal with high radiation, you either need very special robots. Or you need humans. They will not come back, and they might not last very long, but compared to electronics, they are suprisingly tough on a short enough time scale.

Re:No incentive

[Samantha Wright]

Actually, it says in the article that sufficient shielding more than doubled the weight of one Japanese robot used at Fukushima. Also, the normal wireless remote control was useless inside of the reactor buildings and had to be replaced with a cable that eventually snapped. Robots that have to properly accommodate these two requirements do require some specialized engineering, it would appear.