Toshiba's Robot for #Fukushima I Nuke Plant Is a Dud, Japanese Media Is Mum on Shortcomings as Toshiba Tries to Sell to TEPCO

While all Japanese media seem to have simply copied and pasted Toshiba's PR material and called it a "news article", AP actually reported what the reporter saw at a demonstration held in Yokohama on November 21, 2012.

If you just read the Japanese media, Toshiba's four-legged robot has wonderful features. According to one of the media, Sankei Biz (11/22/2012):

• It can withstand 100 millisieverts/hour radiation for almost a year, working 10 hours a day;

• It can move at 1 kilometer/hour, work for 2 hours straight (...wait a minute, you just said it can work 10 hours..);

• It can climb stairs, carry 20 kilograms of load.

But according to AP's Japanese reporter,

• During the demonstration, it took a misstep, with one leg frozen up in the air, and the robot had to be carried off the stairs and rebooted;

• It took one minute to climb one stair;

• If it falls, it cannot get up by itself.

Duh. AP's Ms. Kageyama correctly asks, "What exactly is the robot capable of doing?"

From Bradenton Herald, quoting AP (11/21/2012; emphasis is mine):

Toshiba shows off robot meant to help at nuke site

By YURI KAGEYAMA — AP Business Writer

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Toshiba Corp. has developed a robot it says can withstand high radiation to work in nuclear disasters, but it's not clear what exactly the robot is capable of doing if and when it gets the go-ahead to enter Japan's crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.

The four-legged robot can climb over debris and venture into radiated areas off-limits to humans. One significant innovation, Toshiba said, is that its wireless network can be controlled in high radiation, automatically seeking better transmission when reception becomes weak.

But the machine, which looks like an ice cooler on wobbly metal legs, also appears prone to glitches. The robot took a jerky misstep during a demonstration to reporters, freezing with one leg up in the air. It had to be lifted by several people and rebooted.

The robot was also notably slow in climbing a flight of eight steps, cautiously lifting its legs one by one, and taking about a minute to go up each step.

With obstacles that aren't as even and predictable as steps, such as the debris at the Fukushima plant, it may need as much as 10 minutes to figure out how to clear the object, Toshiba acknowledged.

And if it ever falls, it will not be able to get up on its own.

Still, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it might use the robot to inspect the suppression chamber of the nuclear plant where a devastating meltdown occurred after a mammoth tsunami slammed into northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011.

Toshiba began developing the robot with hopes it would prove useful in helping to decommission the plant. No human has been able to enter the highly radiated chamber since the tsunami disaster.

"We need this to go in and first check what is there," Toshiba Senior Manager Goro Yanase said Wednesday.

It was unclear when a decision on the robot's use would be made, according to TEPCO, which operates the nuclear plant.

Although what Toshiba showed was top-notch robotics, what the machine might be able to do appeared limited in the face of the disaster's magnitude and complexity.

Japan boasts among the world's most sophisticated robotics technology, exemplified in the walking, talking human-shaped Asimo robot from Honda Motor Co. The inability of such gadgetry to help out with the Fukushima disaster was widely criticized.

Part of the reason is that robots, although suited for tasks such as greeting visitors at dealerships, are too delicate. Their wireless remote-controlled networks are not designed to endure high radiation. Honda has acknowledged Asimo would not have been able to withstand the environment at Fukushima, as some had suggested.

Toshiba's Yanase said the new robot, which has a dosimeter to measure radiation and six cameras, can stay in a 100 millisievert environment for about a year and can tolerate even higher radiated areas for shorter periods. At 100 millisieverts, the rise in cancer cases caused by radiation becomes statistically detectable, although even lower dose radiation is not advisable for people.

The suppression chamber was 360 millisieverts the last time it was measured, TEPCO said.

Decommissioning Fukushima Dai-ichi is expected to take decades.

Reading the Sankei article, Toshiba seems to be pressuring TEPCO to take its robot and use it (somehow) at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, as Toshiba expands its portfolio of post-nuclear-disaster technologies that includes gamma-ray camera, SARRY, and the new multi-nuclide decontamination facility (ALPS).

Why does a robot have to be a hunky gadget loaded with stuff and why does it need to climb stairs to begin with? A host of tiny, self-organizing and collaborating drones still gets my vote.

If the robot has to have legs, MIT spin-off's BigDog is not bad either, able to run 5 miles per hour, carrying loads:

Compare this with the Toshiba's robot...

(H/T Twitter follower @metro172)

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