Where Are the Japanese Robots ?

While the whole world has
been watching the nuclear
disaster in Japan, one
question keeps reoccurring:
Where are the robots? The crisis in the Fukushima
Daiichi power plant meets at
least two of the three
requirements for the use of
robots as outlined by the
famous dictum, "dirty, dull, and dangerous." The
Japanese are well known for
their technological prowess
and their enthusiasm for all
things robotic. They are
using a Snakebot to search for survivors amid the urban
debris left by the tsunami.
Why aren't we seeing images
of plucky, little Unmanned
Ground Vehicles (UGV)
charging into highly radioactive areas? For such a thoroughly
covered story, there have
been a surprisingly wide
variety of answers. Some of
the reasons given may have
implications for the civilian adoption of the UGV
technology. Here is a brief
summary of the myriad
media speculations: 1) Japanese have a cultural
bias against robots doing
certain types of work.
Originally appearing in a
Reuters report, this idea has
been widely circulated. It is usually illustrated by an
anecdote about human
operators still working
elevators, a phenomenon
easily observed by foreign
reporters who never leave their hotels. This idea fails to
explain why the Japanese
military do not suffer this
prejudice. According to IEEE
Spectrum, they've asked to
borrow a PackBot 510 and a Warrior 710 from iRobot for
use at the crippled plant. 2) The Fukushima Daiichi
power plant is too old to be
"robot capable." Designed in
1970s, it was simply not built
with robots in mind. This
idea sounds plausible, but I'm a little suspicious of it.
Robots were used in the
clean-up of Three Mile
Island and Chernobyl, both
built in the age of primitive
robots. If robots are not useful, why did the Japanese
military ask to borrow them
form iRobot? 3) The Japanese were so
confident of the safety of
their power plants that they
thought emergency clean-up
robots were unnecessary.
CNET reported that the plant's owners, Tokyo
Electric Power Company
(Tepco), "....never imagined
a situation in which the main
and backup power to the
coastal plant would be knocked out." Prof. Satoshi
Tadokoro, director the
International Rescue Systems
Institute wrote in Center for
Robot-Assisted Search and
Rescue (CRASAR) website that "Power plant companies
mentioned that they did not
need such robots because
their nuclear plants never
have accidents and are safe."
However, the idea that Japanese didn't develop
robots for use in nuclear
accidents doesn't completely
hold up, because... 4) The Japanese did develop
robots for use in nuclear
accidents. CNET reports that
after an accident in 1999,
when two workers died from
radiation, Japan spent millions developing robots
to deal with nuclear leaks.
CNET speculates that we
haven't seen them, because
they were a "shelved
prototype." 5) The Japanese are using
robots. Both IEEE Spectrum
and DVICE report that the
Japanese are using a
radiation-monitoring robot
that sounds like the "shelved prototype" described by
CNET. This is a little
confusing, because when as
spokesman for Tepco was
asked about the use of robots
at the plant site, he replied, "I don't know that we have any
such devices" (source:
Reuters). Perhaps, this
apparent contradiction
occurred, because this robot
wasn't deployed until 7 days after the disaster began. So, at least one UGV is being
utilized. Clearly this is too
little and too late. Why aren't
there more? Why didn't
Japan follow through on its
commitment to field a fleet of unmanned systems that
could actually fix things,
and not just monitor
radiation? The best explanation that I
have seen so far is the one
given by Dr. Robin Murphy
on the CRASAR website:
money. Commenting on
Prof. Tadokoro remarks, he writes, "Emergencies are
outside the normal so it's
hard to speed money in
anticipation of them, hard to
save for that rainy day."
Echoing this sentiment is William Slaeton, who wrote
in Salon that, "Power
companies want cheap robots
that can replace workers and
are always useful. They don't
want robots expensively equipped to handle unlikely
nightmare scenarios."
Slaeton contrasts this with
the French who have built a
fleet of robots for the
purpose of dealing with nuclear accidents. The Japanese attitude
reminds me of the military's
mind-set about unmanned
systems. They didn't build
many robots until the current
wars absolutely forced them to do so. The problem with
this viewpoint is that by the
time you absolutely know
that you need robots in a
nuclear disaster, it's too late. In the wake of the partial
melt-down at the Japanese
plant, virtually every
country in the world is
evaluating their nuclear
program. This is the perfect time for the unmanned
systems community to speak
up about the need for robots
that can assist in "unlikely
nightmare scenarios." The
Japanese have suffered a horrible disaster. It would be
another disaster not to learn
from their mistakes. William Finn writes about
rugged mobile computers,
unmanned systems,
biometrics, battlefield
communications, COTS, ISR,
and other related topics for the AMREL corporate blog.
AMREL makes the Operator
Control Units for the
PackBots robots deployed in
Iraq and Afghanistan. To
learn the latest about unmanned systems and other
Defense technology issues,
visit http:// computers.amrel.com/
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