(OT) Japan's Obsession with Humanoid Robot Goes Creepy

Some call it degrading to women, others call it a male fantasy. Either way, it is creepy. Mechanically, it makes absolutely zero sense.

Who is this entity that came up with this?

It is the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, putting a new front cover for its academic journal:

The best-selling cleaning robot in Japan is a round disk from a US company that is not tethered and which doesn't carry a bloom (or a book):

Rumba's colleagues, albeit in a very different form, are still working hard at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, sometimes alone, sometimes assisting other robots.

Most recently, a Packbot is assisting the decontamination robot "Raccoon" in decontaminating the floor surface of Reactor 2.

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: "Warrior" Robot Vacuumed Reactor 3 Floor, Radiation Still Very High

Yomiuri Shinbun reports that the "Warrior" robot from iRobot went inside the reactor building for the Reactor 3 to vacuum the highly radioactive (or so TEPCO thought) sands accumulated on the floor right off the truck entrance.

It completed the task, braving the high radiation (more than 100 millisieverts/hour in some spots) on July 1. It took the robot 5 hours to collect dust and sand in 3 200-liter containers.

Unfortunately, the radiation level in the area only went down by 10 to 20 millisieverts/hour, and TEPCO is considering laying down the steel plates on the floor to see if they block the radiation.

See "Warrior" in action, as videoed by the fellow iRobot "Packbot", which was then screen-captured by TEPCO on a notebook PC screen:

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: iRobot's "Warrior" to Do the Vacuum Cleaning on Reactor 3 Floor

TEPCO announced on June 30 that the "Warrior" robot from iRobot will vacuum clean the floor of the Reactor 3 reactor building in the area where the high radiation has been detected.

The US-made "Warrior" and Japanese-made vacuum cleaners. (Both Hitachi and Toshiba, TEPCO's affiliate companies at Fukushima I, manufactures vacuum cleaners as well as nuclear reactors...)

The press handout on June 30 says:

"Since radiation dose on the floor is high, we plan to conduct cleaning from July 1 in order to reduce the radiation exposure for the workers, removing the accumulated sand with vacuum cleaners and robots."

Accumulated sand?? From where?

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Packbots in Action

If you want them for posterity, you can download the files (if you don't mind downloading 14 zip files for the Reactor 1 and 8 zip files for the Reactor 3) at TEPCO. The two iRobot's Packbots entered the Reactor 1 and Reactor 3 buildings on April 17. TEPCO decided not to show the fogged up image of the Reactor 2, though.

To download, here's the TEPCO link:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/

Alternatively, I've found that Mainichi Shinbun allows video embeds (that's very rare among major national newspapers; it deserves a special mention here), so here they are:

If you want to embed these on your site, go to the Mainichi's vid site here:

For the 1st vid: http://video.mainichi.co.jp/viewvideo.jspx?Movie=48227968/48227968peevee384424.flv
2nd vid: http://video.mainichi.co.jp/viewvideo.jspx?Movie=48227968/48227968peevee384436.flv
3rd vid: http://video.mainichi.co.jp/viewvideo.jspx?Movie=48227968/48227968peevee384454.flv

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Reactor 2 Bldg Was Too Steamy for iRobot

and the bot couldn't record the radiation level.

Yomiuri Shinbun (in Japanese; 12:37PM JST 4/19/2011) reports:

TEPCO couldn't get enough data on the radiation level in the Reactor 2 building. Two remote-controlled robots went through the door to the Reactor 2 building on April 2. But after measuring 4.1 milli-sievert/hr near the door, the camera lens quickly became foggy due to high humidity (94 to 99%) and couldn't record the radiation level.

Oops.

But wait... Now if I think about it, even if one bot couldn't take a photograph of the reading by the other bot, the readings were stored in the bot, right?

Is TEPCO hiding the information (again), or is iRobot incapable of storing the readings?

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: iRobot Readings of Reactors 1 and 3

From TEPCO's press conference on April 18 morning (in Japanese). TEPCO says they are provisional data.

Reactor 1 building:

Date and time: 4:40PM to 5:30PM, April 17, 2011
Radiation (1st floor, through the north door): 10 to 49 milli-sievert/hr
Temperature: 28 to 29 degrees Celsius
Humidity: 49 to 56%
Oxygen level: 21%

Reactor 3 building:

Date and time: 11:30AM to 1:30PM, April 17, 2011
Radiation: 28 to 57 milli-sievert/hr
Temperature: 19 to 22 degrees Celsius
Humidity: 32 to 35%
Oxygen level: 21%

According to TEPCO, there were a lot of debris inside the Reactor 3 building, and the robots had a hard time moving forward and didn't go much beyond the door.

TEPCO also did the dust sampling.

Part of the reason why they had the robots enter through the north door was because of the high radiation level at the south door.

On April 16, the radiation level at the south door to the Reactor 1 building was measured at 270 milli-sievert/hr. The distance between the north door and the south door is about 30 meters, according to TEPCO. The radiation right outside the north door was also measured on April 16, and it was 20 milli-sievert/hr.

This was the first time the radiation level was measured inside the Reactor buildings (other than Reactor 4 building) since the March 11 earthquake.

The annual limit for radiation exposure for nuclear plant workers has been raised to 250 milli-sievert/year after the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident. Working in the Reactor 3 building for 5 hours would exceed that number.

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: iRobots to the Rescue!

Well, not really, but they went inside the Reactor 3's building to measure the radiation inside the reactor building and take videos. TEPCO hasn't released the data or the video yet.

(The photo is from Yomiuri: Packbot opening the door to the Reactor 3 building.)

From PC World (4/17/2011):

A pair of remote controlled robots entered a reactor building at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Sunday morning for the first time.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power is hoping the iRobot Packbots will be able to provide data on the current condition inside the buildings, parts of which contain high levels of radioactivity and are hazardous for workers to enter.

The robots entered the plant's number 3 reactor building and were due to take radiation and temperature readings. They are equipped with video cameras that can provide a live feed to operators.

Photos released by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) showed one of the robots manipulating a handle on the second of a pair of double doors that lead into the reactor building.

TEPCO has yet to release any information about what the robots found inside the building. If the mission proves a success, the robots will also be used inside the adjacent reactor buildings 1 and 2 at the plant.

Yomiuri Shinbun reports that a worker at the plant measured the radiation level from outside the door to the Reactor 3 building on Saturday, and it was 270 milli-sievert/hour.

The data from the iRobots will be used by TEPCO to determine how long the workers would be able to stay inside the reactor buildings for repairs.

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