Japan mulls new robot help with nuclear disaster
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TOKYO — Japan may be at the forefront of robotics and its children raised on cartoons of robot heroes and villains, but the country has so far had to rely on US-made machines for help tackling its nuclear crisis.
The massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out reactor cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear power plant northeast of Tokyo, where workers are battling to prevent radiation leaks and a total meltdown.
Although Japan is reliant on atomic power and leads the world in developing humanoid machines and industrial robots it has not developed any robots to tackle nuclear accidents.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) has sent in a pair of US-made crawler PackBot robots to examine areas where radiation from the rubble left by explosions is too high for humans to enter..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110505com6.html
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