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Japan Robotics

Transforming Robot Gets Stuck In Fukushima Nuclear Reactor 99

Posted by samzenpus from the bend-me-shape-me dept.
An anonymous reader writes with more bad news for the people still dealing with the Fukushima nuclear accident. "The ability to change shape hasn't saved a robot probe from getting stuck inside a crippled Japanese nuclear reactor. Tokyo Electric Power will likely leave the probe inside the reactor housing at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex north of Tokyo after it stopped moving. On Friday, the utility sent a robot for the first time into the primary containment vessel (PCV) of reactor No. 1 at the plant, which was heavily damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan. 'The robot got stuck at a point two-thirds of its way inside the PCV and we are investigating the cause,' a Tokyo Electric spokesman said via email. The machine became stuck on Friday after traveling to 14 of 18 planned checkpoints."
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Transforming Robot Gets Stuck In Fukushima Nuclear Reactor More

Transforming Robot Gets Stuck In Fukushima Nuclear Reactor

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  • Beginning of a movie (Score:3)

    by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @10:42AM (#49463459)

    This sounds like the beginning of a movie about sentient robots.

    • Re:Beginning of a movie (Score:5, Funny)

      by itzly ( 3699663 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @10:56AM (#49463591)

      Don't worry. You need radiation for the robots to become sentient.

      • Re:Beginning of a movie (Score:4)

        by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @11:37AM (#49463959)

        Don't worry. You need radiation for the robots to become sentient.

        Or a lighting strike... Well that and an animal rights nut job named Stephaney to befriend you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      "We'll send some trained lizards into the radiated environment to free the robot. It's a fool-proof plan."

  • Here's how Optimus Prime got his superpowers!

  • Please, Don't tell Michael Bay (Score:4, Funny)

    by jd2112 ( 1535857 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @10:45AM (#49463489)
    Lets not give him any ideas for another horrible Transformers movie...

    • Re:Please, Don't tell Michael Bay (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @10:52AM (#49463553) Homepage

      Love it, hate it .. but, honestly you simply can't discount a film franchise in which two of the four movies have had global revenues of over a billion dollars and shows up on the lists of highest grossing films.

      At the end of the day, screw artistic merit when you earn zillions of dollars.

      You don't have to like it, but there's not escaping that they've been successful. As long as those movies make that much money, you can count on more of them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by khr ( 708262 )

        you can count on more of them

        And you still don't have to watch any of them if you don't want...

      • Ever seen the bumper sticker "Eat shit, a million flies can't be wrong"? That about sums up my feelings on the issue.

        I understand the motive, but that doesn't change the fact that they took a moderately interesting franchise and turned it into yet another vacuous action movie. [Queue comparisons to the Star Trek reboot, The Hobbit, etc.]

        • Ever seen the bumper sticker "Eat shit, a million flies can't be wrong"? That about sums up my feelings on the issue.

          Could not agree more. Clearly many folks were entertained but wow those were some bad movies.

          I understand the motive, but that doesn't change the fact that they took a moderately interesting franchise

          Moderately interesting franchise? Maybe if you have rose colored glasses from your youth. Some of the comics were kinda-sorta ok stories but none of it was particularly good. I grew up with transformers - they were the big thing during part of my youth. But try watching any of the animation as an adult. It's complete crap designed solely to market toys to kids. Seriously, it's unwatchable. If anything the

        • Well, let's not pretend that the movie industry operates on anything other than a desire for money, and let's not pretend the movie going public is looking for high brow drama.

          If vacuous action movies make billions of dollars, that's what they're going to make.

          I guess you could spend your own personal money trying to make a black and white film about an angst-y mime and his damaged relationship with his mother ... but nobody would give a damn.

          The fact of the matter is, the movie going public isn't paying to

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by itzly ( 3699663 )

            Fast cars, pretty women, and explosions is where the real money is at. Ingmar Bergman? Not so much.

            There's quite an entertaining spectrum between those two extremes.

            • Sure, but nothing short of the mega-action flick does a billion dollars worldwide in box office revenues, at least not that I'm aware of.

              You don't have to watch them. You don't have to like them.

              But nobody at all should be surprised that the high grossing action films continue to get made when people pay to see them.

              Michael Bay doesn't need to have some vaunted "artistic integrity", he just keep cashing the checks and not giving a crap what other people say.

              • Fine, I've got no problem with that. My complaint is when franchises with greater potential get appropriated as "source material" (and yeah, Transformers is borderline, at best, but it's happening to a lot more interesting franchises as well). If your movie is about explosions and nice asses, fine, no problem, I may even watch it after a few beers if I'm in the mood, but why pretend it's related to some more substantive franchise?

                • What franchises are you referring to?

                  Obviously Transformers is related to the kids series, but you clearly have some other franchise in mind which is appropriating source material.

                  The only thing I can even think of is "I Robot", which had nothing whatsoever to with the Asmiov story.

          • Schindler's List did $321,306,305 world-wide in '93. IIRC, there was only once scene with a blotch of color in it - the kid in the red coat. Paper Moon (1973) was done in black and white, and it's a pretty good movie - made it to the top 10 in '73.

            And if you go back to 1970, Love Story was #1 with $106 million gross, and it was certainly not an action flick. In today's dollars, that's 641 million [bls.gov].

      • Re:Please, Don't tell Michael Bay (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Hussman32 ( 751772 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @12:32PM (#49464371)

        Look at it this way, Universal Studios makes the Transformers series. Any serious filmgoer won't even watch them on the plane, but the studio rakes in enough cash to make movies like No Country for Old Men, Watchmen, Up In the Air, Interstellar, and a bunch of other movies you may or may not want to see.

        As long as they keep making enough good movies to justify the crap, I don't mind.

      • Re:Please, Don't tell Michael Bay (Score:4, Insightful)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Monday April 13, 2015 @02:55PM (#49465401)

        Love it, hate it .. but, honestly you simply can't discount a film franchise in which two of the four movies have had global revenues of over a billion dollars and shows up on the lists of highest grossing films.

        At the end of the day, screw artistic merit when you earn zillions of dollars.

        You don't have to like it, but there's not escaping that they've been successful. As long as those movies make that much money, you can count on more of them.

        The technical term is "Asses in seats". Hollywood knows summer blockbusters are basically plotless action flicks that really have little artistic merit, but damn do they get those asses into those seats.

        And it's just fine. Every other creative medium has similar things going for it - books can be pulp or they can be literature, or span the wide gap between them. Movies can be thought-provoking, life altering with tons of subtext, or they can consist of people just blowing crap up. You see this in video games too - from your standard FPS shooter that sells and makes billions to your indie game exposing some human condition.

        Just because Depression Quest is a thought-provoking video game doesn't mean you can't have your Call of Duty.

        Ironically, though, Michael Bay isn't a bad a filmmaker as you think [youtube.com]. He actually does do quite a few things right that other filmmakers do wrong.

      • Love it, hate it .. but, honestly you simply can't discount a film franchise in which two of the four movies have had global revenues of over a billion dollars and shows up on the lists of highest grossing films.

        You might not be able to discount them, but I certainly can. Crap remains crap even if it's designed to sell merchandise (Transformer-branded shit-paper, anyone?) and succeeds in that by means of brat's pester power.

        I didn't actually know (or care, in the slightest) that they were a quadruple of fi

  • Transforming Robot Gets Stuck In Fukushima Nuclear Reactor

    Oh, man, that has to be the best headline all year.

    I for one welcome our new giant, transforming robotic overlords.

    Why the hell haven't we been seeing stories about transforming robots yet?

  • Not a problem (Score:3)

    by Kardos ( 1348077 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @10:53AM (#49463567)

    .... just send in another transforming robot to retrieve it.

  • Rope (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They should have tied a rope on it to pull it out.

  • I've seen this movie... (Score:3)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @11:12AM (#49463719) Homepage

    ..next we hear from Japan, some crazy, 50 ft tall robot will be destroying Tokyo.

  • Respawn (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They shouldjust force suicide and respwan at the last checkpoint

  • That transforming robot was clearly a Decepticon in disguise and how is surely gathering all of the energy in Fukushima to convert to Energon for Megatron! Someone call the Autobots.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @11:35AM (#49463919)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Don't worry, a billion self-driven cars will never make an error. We've thought of everything. Because that's how engineering works. No errors, all the time. Unless it's turning a corner or something--

    • Re:Confidence, that's the ticket (Score:4, Insightful)

      by itzly ( 3699663 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @11:37AM (#49463957)

      Self driving cars only need to make less errors than smartphone-distracted humans. That's not a very high standard.

      • It's a standard no self driving car has yet approached.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by itzly ( 3699663 )

          The test cars that are on the road seem to be doing pretty well. I wouldn't be surprised if they've already surpassed human drivers for the easy roads.

          • There are two streams of data. Marketing coming from Google and real data coming from various DARPA challenge participants.

            Guess which one you are listening to?

            No self driving car has yet driven in 'the wild' without a professional driver ready to take control at a moments notice. Control transfers that are routine, even on divided highways.

          • Where 'easy' is a rural limited-access divided highway in good condition, light traffic, no construction or other complications. mid-day, and clear weather?

        • It's a standard no self driving car has yet approached.

          Too true -- no deployed self driving car has yet performed that badly.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by khallow ( 566160 )

        Self driving cars only need to make less errors than smartphone-distracted humans. That's not a very high standard.

        They also want them to be able to drive fast in dense traffic and my understanding, with decentralized logic as to how to handle emergencies. That's a high standard, though not an unachievable one.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Did they try hitting it with a little carb cleaner?
  • The same engineers that designed my Toyota. They thought it would be a good idea to have to replace rear signal lights by remove a panel inside the car and reaching in about 18 inches to TRY to turn the bulb socket in order to remove it. Obviously, the were hoping to sell robots like this to people who needed to replace their turn signals. At least I am not bitter about it.
    • That's nothing. The new VW bug needs a specially designed screw driver to remove a panel under the hood so you can get at the headlights. It is a dealer replacement job and not made so you can do it yourself.
  • Attention People of Tokyo!!!!!

  • Baby Godzilla now has a toy to play with.

    From TFA:

    the remote-controlled robot is 60 centimeters long and can be configured into a form resembling the letter I as well as one resembling the numeral 3.

    Perhaps tomorrows episode of Sesame Street will have Godzilla as a guest star.

    Brought to you by the letter "I" and the number "3".

  • It appear that the robot is only capable of forming the letter I and E at this time, so future communications with it will be difficult.
  • I for one welcome our new Radioactive Transforming Robotic Overlords.

  • Radiation. Our electronics and robotics thrive on miniturization however that is not useful when you're dealing with radiation. You want really thick circuits. You want something that can be swiss cheesed by the radiation all day and all night for years on end and still work.

    Here is my first idea:
    Have as little circuitry in the robot as possible. Instead run most of that stuff to a substation by wire that will get close to but not actually enter the reactor. Ideally, the only thing I'd put in the robot woul

    • I would suggest using hydraulics and fiberoptics. Dont bother with active circuits at all. If all you want to do is look and grab, go really old school. Dont use amplifiers when two tin cans and a string will survive the radiation.

      • fiber optics? You're going to need a media converter to translate the fiber optic signal into an electrical one at both ends. So I think that would actually make the robot less reliable.

        As to hydraulics, that is interesting... you would need actuators on the robot which I'm assuming would still need to be triggered electronically. I suppose you could trigger them with pneumatic pressure. That is, if some pressure comes in on this tube, you trigger this actuator and if this tube then that actuator?

        That leave

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      Radiation. Our electronics and robotics thrive on miniturization however that is not useful when you're dealing with radiation. You want really thick circuits. You want something that can be swiss cheesed by the radiation all day and all night for years on end and still work.

      It is a little trickier than that. Finer circuits present a smaller cross section; for example if the cross section decreases faster than the stored charge, then resistance to single event upset becomes greater which is the case with t

      • Murphy's law. Rather than building something that is less likely to catch that stray neutron that punches through that critical component in just the right way... why don't you assume that however you build it, the worst possible thing will happen to it immediately.

        Once you accept that, your view will shift from trying to mitigate probabilities and into simply immunizing the technology.

        We can build a robot that cannot be destroyed by the sorts of radiation you'll find in a damaged reactor. Literally immune.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Agripa ( 139780 )

          I thought using hydraulics and fiber optics was obvious and such things are common in hazardous industrial environments. I remember seeing demonstrations of fluidic logic although I am not sure it scales down well enough compared to MEMs logic:

          http://www.eetimes.com/documen... [eetimes.com]

          I wonder how it would compare though to a much faster dedicated silicon on insulator process with 100^2 micron feature size.

          • Well, it would be obvious to an expert but I am just another arm chair speculator... I'd love to see an example of this technology. Are there are any videos or pictures of such machines?

  • The Japanese Perocialism (Score:3)

    by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Monday April 13, 2015 @05:12PM (#49466181)
    The Japanese have been very reluctant to use non-Japanese technology for Fukushima problems. They would rather use home grown systems, and this has not worked out very well for them.

    For example, their record on handling radioactive water [wikipedia.org] has been a list of miserable failures. Briefly, there were three different systems used to treat the water being used to cool the reactors: a French system from AREVA, a system from Kurion, a startup based in Orange County California, and a system built by Hiatachi/Tobshba. The timeline is complex, but both the French and Japanese systems broke almost immediately when they went into full scale operation. The Kurion system was more reliable, but it was not used as the primary cleanup platform.

    The muon imaging that has been used to verify core meltdowns was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and LLNL proposed that they work directly with TEPCO. Instead TEPCO worked with the US company that ended up with the equipment after the LLNL development project ended. All the press releases describe the imaging as being done by Hiatachi, who ran the detector in Japan. Even so, there are actually two different muon imaging systems in place, and one of them is directly from LLNL. The results from the second LLNL detector have not been officially announced yet.

    Outside Japan, experts were not optimistic about the ice wall project to keep ground water from entering the reactor buildings. They spent a lot of time, effort and money and then had to give up.

    I can only speculate, but I think they are very reluctant to use US technology unless they can rebrand it as Japanese. I think they want to show that they are better at high tech the the US.

    They may match or beat the US in industrial applications, but because of DARPA investment in disaster and military technology, the US has more robust robot technology for chaotic real world conditions. Just look at ASIMO vs Boston Dynamics PETMAN, ATLAS or BIG DOG. The Boston Dynamics robots all have videos where they are being shoved and kicked and stay upright. It's obvious that one good shove and ASIMO would end up on the floor and might be badly damaged.

    It just seems strange that there has not been more collaboration between Japan and the rest of the world for dealing with the Fukushima disaster. DARPA has been working on robots for HASMAT environment for a long time and yet they have no presence at Fukushima. It seems that Japanese ethnocentrism and pride is now making a bad situation more difficult.

  • I saw a documentary awhile back, they had floated a probe down there. So much radiation the cameras kept showing bright spots all over, then the probe died after 10 minutes. This plant will be an environmental disaster for thousands of years.

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