Vijay Kumar at Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at University of Pennsylvania has small autonomous flying robots that can sense each other and form a team to carry out tasks - surveying, searching, construction, and more - all while avoiding obstacles.
Going into reactor buildings and surveying the radiation levels is one of the things Dr. Kumar actually mentions in the video.
Fukushima I Nuke Plant could use a swarm of these tiny helicopter robots.
Very interesting video.
ReplyDeleteCould indeed be interesting for Tepco, secret services and other organized crime organizations.
However, I fear these robots aren't very radiation safe and cannot be reset without complications like Quince when the microcontrollers hang due to radiation-induced errors. Just calculate in some casualties :-)