Slashdot Mirror
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."
I got serious doubts about Japan in reality vs. Japan in virtuality after these nuclear disaster events.
Vassili Leonov
With nuclear accidents being extremely rare there is no point in designing robots specifically for them. Those models would most likely become obsolete without ever being used.
Pride prevented them from acknowledging their weaknesses and thus prevented them from building robots that could go into the bad places that humans have made.
it is pretty typical japanese ignore a potential situation until you are shamed into no longer ignoring it. It is one of the few things that japan does that they are ashamed of but because they are shamed they won't fix it.
American's are alway cleaning up the mess made by others. hopefully one day someone will clean up after us American's
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
That is because the Japanese foremost designed their robots to take care of old people.
Have them walk into a exploded nuclear reactor and save the world was not on their todo list, yet.
Most Slashdotters are hopelessly naive and deluded about reality. Especially in space threads, but also anything involving robots.
For a dyslexic, nuclear is unclear.
I tend to consider this as very stupid, as the dangers clearly outweigh any benefit, but I'll post this idea for the sake of protecting the heroes that have to give their lives because the idiot weasels first lied to get power and then betrayed their voters by choosing the alternative that is unsafe.
Much has been done with self-sufficient robots (like promotng soccer championships). I guess we should go the way of "mechas" first. It would be a lot easier to build a remote controlled mecha than to do a full anime friednly robot able to sacrifice himself for us.
Heck, some people would actually find it very funny to pilot such mechas. And they could deployed instantly to deal with tragedies like exploding reactors.
This wouldn't be very good as a war weapon, so I find the idea even better.
Just my 2.
OT, but this registered users getting +1 sucks. And no, registering would not solve the problem. If you don't like it, why not go elsewhere... isn't it the automatic reply?
When did Noah build the ark?
Before the rain.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Robotic research has been more focused on the more profitable Companion Bot market, or so it appears...
Some of them were playing violin, while rest enjoyed walking up and down the stairs.
839*929
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.
go read up tales of gilgamesh and tell me after reading that the jews just didn't copy it over ....and to think with them and Americans we now have copyrights all over the world....
The comments here on /. are focused on why robots were not built in advance. But I am wondering why nothing was done in the days after the disaster.
When I heard about the attempts of cooling from the outside using fire trucks, which failed because the radiation was too high for the personnel, my first thought was:
Mythbusters can make a vehicle remote operated for a weekly TV show. The entire nation of Japan can't make a fire truck remote operated after facing a nuclear disaster?
Risk includes magnitude.
Deleted
Robots were sent and it was on Slashdot at the time too. The problem is Robots don't work in radioactive environments unless they have been made for it. You can't harden every existing robot to radiation because they normally don't encounter that level of radiation working in a Car Manufacturing plant. Even we only have 1 facility that specializes in making that kind of equipment. If it's a matter of pride to Japan that "Their" robots didn't help they will find out that the cost to build and maintain that kind of facility is well beyond anything the private sector (Honda) will be willing to put forward.
The most important questions go beyond the robots:
Why did they use a design that was pronounced risky by Rand McNally BEFORE the plant was built?
Why did they build it in an earthquake zone and in a zone vulnerable to tsunamis?
I bet a lot of of Japanese business men would love for the focus to stay on some technical failures with the robots.
That's about $13 million. To put that into perspective, the Lunar X-prize robotics challenge offers prize money of $30 million; that doesn't even include team sponsorship. According to Wikipedia, the CMU robotics institute's projects alone cost more than $50 million every year. I know...financial crisis and all...but still, a billion yen is not much for robotics research.
Likely to "see the radiation"? How about reading up on the spectrum emitted. As for analog cameras — are saying there are robots that use film cameras as visual sensors? If radiation is jamming the electronics then the human sent in that environment will fry on the spot in the matter of minutes. Simple as that.
Under high radiation, even oils like lubricants and hydraulic liquids can go bad very quickly. You can imagine your car running with gunk instead of oil.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Likely to "see the radiation"? How about reading up on the spectrum emitted.
No matter if you have some light sensing diodes, transistors or what not, add some heavy ionisation
and your system will trigger all the time, as if it "saw" something...
If radiation is jamming the electronics then the human sent in that environment will fry on the spot in the matter of minutes. Simple as that.
Biological systems degrade slowly under radiation. With radioation already strong enough to disable everything mechanical not specifically designed for this radioation, humans might only get sick, get better, still live half a year and die then. With even stronger radiation, humans will not live long, but still be able to work half an hour where the robots just got an instant-off.
Robots where already of not much use in Tschernobyl. And modern electronics (unless specially designed) is only getting more and more delicate in that regard.
To me, the parent post seems an elaborate rationalization for why the argument, nuke==bad didn't win in Japan. The Japanese must be secretly ashamed of not agreeing with a Slashdot poster.
The overlords were overlording over their minions.
Thats what minions are for - to do the actual work. Overlords just sit back and watch the chaos!
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It also doesn't matter that you use photoelectrical chemicals, like our eyes.
You are overestimating the problem radiation causes to a sensor. You can deal with it with some good averaging, like is applied on our eyes, or you can use more complex techiniques that will give even better results.
Now, the problem of radiation destroing the sensor is a big one. For solving that you'd even need specialized semiconductor fabrics. With some redundancy and shielding you can make they last longer, maybe that is good enough.
Rethinking email
It's pretty simple - Japan doesn't really design robots to do jobs that humans can't do. Japan designs robots so that they don't have to let foreigners into the country. Therefore, most of the robotics research has been to deal with problems introduced by an aging closed society - things like taking care of the elderly, farming or teaching English to students (though the last one is actually South Korea).
Japanese don't want any non-Japanese in their country doing these jobs (I speak from experience) but they're fine blowing billions of dollars to try and solve the problem with robots. Nuclear power plant meltdown isn't this sort of problem so there was no research funding for it.
You are an idiot.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Not much use in this case so they had to get the German Waldos in.
While it probably creates some noise, it shouldn't be that big of a problem for a camera. One video inside Chernobyl suggests this is not an issue. Another one from a robot inside.
Another anti nuclear leaning mdsolar story surprise surprise.
Robots don't like working in an environment that not only has high radiation but is covered in debris. Perhaps all new reactors should have a completely isolated from other systems fixed/tracked robotic arms in key areas so they can do repairs change valves in an emergency
Here's a hint: it's an analogy.
The point is this. You implement precautions. You then follow up with contingency plans.
Although this was a technical mishap, it doesn't eliminate the necessity for the robots should something terrible occur.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
The difference, of course, is that the Japanese are focused on research in the consumer aspects of robotics. Their robots are pretty, and some of them have made advances in legged locomotion, but the Japanese are not well known for their battle-hardened rescue or military robots. Most of the research in the US into robotics is funded by the military. That means we produce no-nonsense, no-frills robots with proven technology for these applications (Rescue, reconassiance, etc.). Of course, the US has its fair share of consumer robots as well. Look at Willow Garage, for example. I think that we need funding and research in both sectors to advance the field.
Â¥1 billion may sound like a lot, but it's only about $13M. Not exactly a major commitment.
An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan. -- George Patton
Have gnu, will travel.
Where were the robots? They were in the same place as the dosimeters, hazmat suits, geiger counters, breathing apparatus, standby generators, dual remote electrical hookups (Japan has two electrical standards), stocks of boron, reactor model upgrades, structure vents, and so on. In other words, nowhere. All preparation for emergencies was skipped. No doubt a couple decades of management bonuses were paid for keeping costs down.
This is why nuclear power is unsafe. Because you can't trust humans to run systems where a cost cut today doesn't blow up for 10-20 years. This kind of crap happens in all industries, it's just that in the nuclear industry the "oops" consequences are devastating.
Remain calm! All is well!
Maybe a tsunami is rare, but they still have Mothra and Godzilla over there, so it's probably worth it
ASIMO is actually a programmable mannequin whose purpose is to intice pensioners in Japan to spend their retirement checks on buying Honda stock.
Several reports in the early hours of the desaster indicate that ionizing radiation from the meltdowns of the reactors rendered electronic equipment useless. Not to short-shift the effects on humans, i.e. human tissue, from the ionizing radiation which in a few years will give a fuller detail on the human tragedy of the Japan Government to comprehend and understand the severity of this disaster.
A very sad thing when the top, middle and lowest level of national leaders of any country do not have the ability to ... comprehend.
Processing units must be protected against the radiation. This is expensive (weight) and you dont build a robot that *might* be used in a radiation environment. So not quick adaptibility here. Extreme heat and cold could be more interesting - these robots could be used for fighting fires or solve problems with (advanced) cooling systems. But: For space, they try to use processing units with the ability to repair themselfes, rather than to use a radiation shields. They could be used for these robots, too.
The main problem is not the sensors, but all the electronic components, which are subject to SEUs.
SEUs are usually mitigated not by shielding the electronics (which is not very effective, because several inches of lead are needed), but by adding redundancy, ECC, etc.
I thought the ultimate problem with the *response* to the Fukushima disaster was the need to show the world - and in particular the nuclear power marketplace - that they could fix the problem themselves and how it was really no big deal. No power on site: why not get some heavy lift (military only?) helicopters to drop in gensets and pumps? ZOMFG THEY CALLED THE ARMED FORCES IN! No suitably shielded personnel to enter the site and do stuff: why not send remote-control / autonomous machines in? WTF? THIS SHIT IS SO BAD WE NEED ROBOTS NOW?
Japanese people love robots - I love robots - the last thing we needed was to watch one brown out, go twitchy and catch fire in HD. It would be cheaper and less of a PR disaster to get several busloads of Russian firemen. Some of them probably even have experience and are no longer at risk of losing their fertility.
Japan did a very good job with Fukushima. You see? It was fixed by a few guys with spades and boilersuits. *That's* how safe nuclear power is. Please move along, nothing to see here. Now where's the Daily Mail's headline about killer arsonist wind turbines throwing tomahawks in high winds, poisoning ponies in beautiful places over the rainbow and NOT EVEN WORKING PROPERLY?
You can only say that about a plant that was closed without ever having an accident. Maine Yankee, for example, had three accidents before it was closed because it was a major accident waiting to happen. Even Humboldt Bay, which barely operated at all because designers ignored seismic data, managed to lose nuclear fuel. Relying on defense-in-depth rather than intrinsically safe operations means the defenses do get used.
Not much when non-rad hardened robots for EoD type work start at $60,000 and can go up to $275,000.
While Japan was caught naping, the US had robots for the job and sent some over.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215346/U.S._to_send_radiation_hardened_robots_to_Japan
Well, hate to tell you this, but there are currently digital cameras on Mars being exposed to much more radiation than whats present in Fukushima and they've been working for years.