IRS in Japan uses UGV, CRASAR has more missions but waiting

Posted by admin on Mar 24, 2011 at 8:01 am America/Chicago

[caption id="attachment_488" align="alignright" width="300" caption="In the "easy" line of sight part of the gym"][/caption] We've confirmed that the International Rescue Systems Institute used one of the ground robots that was here at Disaster City for our joint workshop to explore a partially collapsed gym on 3-18 and in the meantime have generated more missions for our marine vehicle members at Hachinohe and surrounding ports, complementing new apps for our ground and aerial robots.  Dr. Eric Steimle, our marine vehicle lead for our Roboticists Without Borders program, spent most of yesterday working with various companies and groups such as the Center for Ocean Technology at USF and AUVSI to match up capabilities with needs and with transportation and power logistical constraints. Eric led the marine vehicle effort for CRASAR for our post-Hurricane Wilma and Ike. CRASAR is working on finalizing logistics and permissions (and hopefully additional funding), we hope to depart soon, the situation at Fukushima permitting. I'll provide an update later, but the IRS report echoed iRobot's comments about using their robots (both are the same size and general capability) for the Fukushima reactors- saying they were glad the doors in the gym were open. Shut or locked doors are major problems for robots operating in "human navigable" spaces, where robots are going where people COULD go, but shouldn't. Good job, IRS!!