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Foundations of Robotics Seminar, January 12, 2012
Time
and Place | Seminar Abstract
Rescue mobile robot Quince: Toward emergency response to nuclear
accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants on March 2011
Keiji Nagatani
Graduate School of Engineering
Tohoku University
Thursday, January 12, 2011
NSH 3305
Talk 1:30 pm
On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Tohoku area,
eastern Japan. Since then, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power
Station has been facing a crisis because of loss of all power, and
resulting in meltdown accidents. Three reactor buildings were
seriously damaged because of hydrogen explosions, and one building
was also out of control. It was too dangerous situation for human to
inspect inside the buildings because of radioactive material
release. To respond to this crisis, we considered using our rescue
mobile robots for surveillance missions. Before delivering one of
our robots to TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), we needed to
solve some technical issues, such as hardware reliability,
communication function, and radiation hardness of the electric
components. Furthermore, we needed to add some sensors and functions
to respond to this crisis. Therefore, we began a redesign project to
equip the robot for disaster response missions. Finally, one of the
robots was delivered to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants
on June 20, 2011, and it performed some important missions inside
the buildings. In this talk, we will introduce the requirements for
the exploration mission in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants,
report how we fulfilled them, and report some recent mission results.
Keiji Nagatani received Ph.D degree from university of Tsukuba, Japan
in 1997. Between 1997 and 1999, he was a postdoctoral fellow at
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, and between 1999 and 2005, he
was a lecturer at Okayama University, Japan. Currently, he is an
associate professor in the graduate school of engineering, Tohoku
university, Japan. His research interest is field mobile robotics,
particularly motion control of planetary rovers and development of
tracked vehicles for search and rescue mission in disaster
environments.
The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.