Our five person, four marine robot team has arrived in Japan to assist the International Rescue Systems Institute (IRS) with inspecting damaged bridges, docks, and pipelines, as well as with victim recovery for five days. We’ll be experimenting with four different suitcase-sized remotely operated vehicles (ROV), smaller versions of the tethered ROVs used at the BP Oil Spill but just as capable.

Dr. Eric Steimle, AEOS, and Karen Dreger of the University of South Florida’s Center for Ocean Technology have brought a Seamor ROV with advanced imaging sonars and a smaller-than-a-soccer-ball AC-ROV with video. Sean Newsome and Jesse Rodocker have brought two Seabotix ROVs, the SARbot which is optimized for responders to put in the water in 3 minutes to save a person trapped underwater and the LBV-300-5, their powerful work horse ROV. I’ll profile each of the platforms in later blogs.

We are traveling with funding from the National Science Foundation (thanks!) and Continental and United- thanks to John Chapman and Hiro Donoshita have been extremely helpful with transporting the gear and expediting us through customs, with lots of help from Dr. Anne Emig and Ms. Kazuko Shinohara of NSF.  Dr. Tetsuya Kimura of IRS has made all the travel arrangements within Japan, including the 3 car convoy needed to haul us north to our first mission at the coastal city of Minami-Sanriku-Cho.

Everyone is donating their time and equipment through the Roboticists Without Borders program- really big shout out to Sean, Jesse, Karen, and especially Eric who has been marshaling the ROVs. It’s hard to believe that we’ve got so many top experts and gear to support our Japanese colleagues and people. I’m sure they are going to be able to do good and that we will all learn from their efforts.

Check out the press release for more details or how to contact us.

Here’s the latest photos and robots released by TEPCO. and here’s more info.

I’m back from Japan- interesting work going on with robots at Fukushima. CNN is running the story about the T-Hawks, though the picture looks suspiciously like the shot from the fixed wing taken earlier on March 24 by Air Photo Services (and the caption is ambiguous). I’m reluctant to post with what I’ve heard or been working on due to lack of permission or lack of verification, but I believe there are more robots being used in useful, rational ways than the press knows about. The robotics community is pulling together and supporting the efforts discretely, as press is very distracting during a crisis.

Dr. Eric Steimle and I believe that the last pieces are falling into place to allow us to deploy next week to assist IRS with marine vehicles. Lots of work to be done and we’re excited!

I’m in Tokyo. CRASAR has had to turn down one request for marine robots,  is responding to another request for marine vehicles for recovery operations, and I’m here without robots to advise on unmanned systems for the Fukushima reactor response.

It was a difficult week as the CRASAR team had to turn down the request of the Port of Hachinohe and nearby surrounding areas to use unmanned marine vehicles. Our colleagues at the International Rescue Systems Institute, particularly Prof. Fumi Matsuno and the Hachinohe Institute of Technology, set up logistics and gave generously  of their time. But delays in approvals and funding (travel exceeded our reserves so we had to get outside funding)  here in the US caused us to be unable to travel, so we lost that opportunity. Dr. Eric Steimle has pulled together an amazing set of five different marine vehicles and sensors from our members and his contacts- all man portable and can go through check through luggage- through our Roboticists Without Borders program. Everyone on the marine team remains on standby.

In the meantime, I was contacted to advise with the use of robots for the Fukushima reactor incident and am here now in Japan. No robots (the authorities have already lined up the ones they want) and I am not getting within 50 miles of the plant.  Just here with our experience in post-disaster inspection with land, marine, and aerial vehicles to help transfer that experience as needed (or IF needed, as sometimes the most helpful thing to do in a disaster is just to stay out of the way). I haven’t checked in with the Public Information Officer so I hope to be able to provide details within the next day.

And Prof. Tetsuya Kimura from IRS has just sent a request for marine vehicles from Minami-Sanriku-Cho!   Our newest member of Roboticists Without Borders, Seabotix, has a distributor in Japan who is looking at coming to join IRS at Minami-Sanriku-Cho immediately. Then the US team would join them with a different, complementary set of marine vehicles when funding and approvals get in place.

So why marine vehicles? Aren’t the Japanese Self Defense Forces and the Marines (I used to be on that group’s technical advisory board- go CBIRF!) with people and ships doing a massive operation? Sure- but they appear to be focusing on victim recovery and from “human assessable” approaches (wading). This still leaves critical infrastructure inspection (bridges, seawalls, navigational channels, pipelines, etc.) undone- all essential to getting the economy back going, to getting shipments of food and water in, and utilities restored. And also there is the recovery of victims under deeper water.

I’ll try to post more as the situation and PIO approvals permit.

In the end, it’s not about the technology, it’s about people. So we all are keeping the Japanese people in our thoughts and prayers- the terrible impact of the disasters, the sacrifices of the Fukushima plant workers,  the awfulness of not being to find or recover the bodies of loved ones- it’s just hard to comprehend.

robots.net has begun to follow this blog (thank you!) and has gently taken me to task for gaps in posting… so let me recap where we are.

To the best of my knowledge as of last night when I exchanged email with IRS members, robots from the members of the International Rescue System Institute have not been actually used but have been transported to areas where authorities are requesting help. Underwater assets appear to be of the most interest, as expected (see earlier blogs). Research focus in Japan has been primarily in ground robots. CRASAR remains on stand-by to complement IRS efforts, with Dr. Eric Steimle leading the effort of identifying the best small platform/highly capable sonars combinations for the situations being described to us and getting volunteers through our humanitarian Roboticists Without Borders program. In the micro-UAV front, Prof. Andreas Birk at Jacobs University in Bremen who has participated in field exercises with the German military has sent us his image fusion and mapping software to use with the CRASAR cache of AirRobots and possibly with the Draganflyers and ISENSYS platforms on call.  However, CRASAR remains on stand-by as there is no mission for us and the proximity of operations to the unstable nuclear situation.

I continue to get asked about nuclear response robots, so let me recap what I’m hearing about that. A monirobo has been on the site as well as teleoperated fire fighting robots for several days now- the fire fighting robots appear to have been used, I can’t tell about the monirobo.   iRobot has apparently sent some packbots as well– they are great for low-level radiation situations (or for high radiation die-in-place conditions)and much more agile that the traditional tank style monirobo. I haven’t seen or heard anything about the actual use of the packbots. I haven’t heard anything about Red Zone robots (Red Whitaker’s company that made the robots used for Chernobyl and Three Mile Island)- but usually those types of robots are custom made after the fact.

Here’s an example of a small, easily to literally throw in the water unmanned surface vehicle which was used to inspect a bridge damaged by Hurricane Ike and here’s a link to a paper about the use at Wilma and Ike.

Land, sea, and aerial robots will be essential to a speedy Japanese recovery- both victims and economic.

As the nuclear situation and Libya begins to gain more attention in the press, it is important to remember that recovery is an important and challenging task. The majority of the 11,000 missing (presumed dead) are expected to be underwater, requiring an unprecedented use by fire departments of manual divers operating under high personal risk in freezing, highly turbid, debris-filled water where than can see only a meter or so and must conduct most of their work by touch (see our work on hurricane response with marine vehicles at Hurricanes Wilma and Ike). Economic recovery also involves other agencies or companies assessing significant infrastructure underwater (ports, bridge footings, pipelines, etc) as well as literally millions of buildings and homes above ground. Our experience in the US with hurricanes is that this can literally take 2 years to just get started and a decade to see full economic recovery.

Our work with TEEX and the Center for Hazard Reduction and Recovery here at Texas A&M has found that THE most critical barrier is   the lack of structural understanding of the various facilities. For example, bridges, seawall, and shipping lanes, and portions of piping, electrical and communication lines are underwater and there are not enough manual divers to rapidly perform assessment; plus the divers must work by touch at high risk to themselves.  Railroads, particularly subways, have large underground, high confined segments.  As seen in the New Zealand quake, the condition of many buildings are in debate, because the structural engineers legally must assume the worst and thus under safety laws cannot risk going in to find out the true state.  Marine robots, especially miniature “boats” that are easy to lift in and out of the water, can help by using specialized sonars to see in turbid water.  Ground robots can enter buildings, climb stairs or snake/caterpillar their way through rubble (such what we did at the World Trade Center and Berkman Plaza II collapse- as well as what New Jersey Task Force 1 did in Hackensack)  to get interior views. Helicopter-type robots can give a hummingbird’s view perpendicular to damage along a tall building in minutes without requiring man-lifts or cranes to be moved in place (such as what we did post-Hurricane Katrina).

We remain on stand-by to help. We are waiting for the nuclear situation to cool down (literally) and for IRS to have missions for us- sometimes this is harder to use robots because recovery isn’t a fire department responsibility, where IRS has strong ties, but is independently handled by transportation agencies, prefectures and municipalities, utilities, insurance agencies, construction firms, and insurance agencies.

Let’s hope our colleagues here and in Japan can start soon to help with this next phase!

In the meantime our hearts and prayers go out to the Japanese people.

Reuters skewers Japan for leading the world in manufacturing robots and for having rescue robots but not having nuclear disaster robots. This is a bit unfair as pretty much no country has robots (or at least barely plural) for nuclear disasters- denial and spending the necessary R&D money for this very, very hard type of robot is not unique to the Japanese, the US is in similar shape.

Thanks to team member Prof. Howie Choset for passing this along!