The little robots currently investigating the conditions inside the damaged nuclear reactor in Fukushima, Japan, look like machines used by NASA for missions to Mars and for looking survivors after the terrorist attacks on September 11.
According to the official website of the American Space Agency, the robot which is now on a mission in the reactors looks like a combination of Rocky 7 and Urbie.
The first one is a machine created to serve as a basis for building Spirit and Opportunity, the technology “twins” which are now on Mars, and Urbie is a scouting minivehicle.
Urbie is a reconnaissance robot designed for urban areas, with military and disaster applications. It is perfect for dangerous places, for areas with high levels of radiation or chemical pollution too high for safe direct human intervention.
Its structure is also recommended for missions in the rubble of buildings hit by earthquakes. Urbie’s success led to the creation of PackBot, a robot that has been sold since 2002 to the U.S. military.
PackBot’s first mission was searching for survivors in the rubble of the Twin Towers after the terrorist attack of September 11. Then it was sent to Afghanistan in July 2002, being used by soldiers to shoot and record audio in inaccessible or very dangerous areas.
These robots are manufactured by iRobot Corporation, which produced this year the two robots used now at Fukushima. They are on a mission at Daiichi nuclear power plant, being equipped with numerous cameras and instruments to measure radiation levels. Information from the robots show that the radiation level is still too high for man to work there.