Robot, drone fail on nuclear plant missions

Wow, these boys need to take a page out of Robot Wars.

Those ""kids" keep those bots battling time after time.

Keep trying boy!

This story is actually getting funny. Why land it on the roof if you cannot retrieve it? How did they get the other robot off the stairs? This is like the 3 stooges at their best.

Well, trial and error, I guess, though with TEPCO it seems only to be error, error, error (new president), error, error, error, error, error (hide data), error (falsify new data), error, error, error, THANKS TO SOMEONE ELSE MINOR SUCCESS, error, error, error, error, error, error (new president quits), error, error, error (first bailout), error, error, error, IAEA comes again -- admittance of one error, error error, error (expectance of public understanding), error, error, error....

It's kind of like getting your frisbee stuck on your neighbor's roof, except that this house is deadly radioactive.

I wonder what happened to the 4 iRobot systems that worked so well in March?

@goddog: It says that they did retrieve the robot and when a helicopter developes engine trouble, you put it down as soon as you can on a flat area so as not to damage the rotors. It laso say " it was not immediately known when or how the drone may be retrieved", it does not say it is irretrievable.

I'm so glad Japanese auto companies can make robots that can sing, dance, ride bikes... money well spent guys!

practice robot, that can help in a crisis, who needs that ?

Why doesn't TEPCO just request specialized robots that can handle radiation from the US again.

I would bet that the fuel used in the helicopter was of the wrong type.

@Kapuna: I woudn't think so because they have been using them on this crisis for some time now.

I`m trying very hard to maintain a positive frame of mind here, but all the news coming out of Fukushima is so bad! Malfunction after malfunction - is this just that this is incredibly difficult, technical work and the chances of failure are high? Or is everyone just haplessly incompetent?

Robots, surprisingly perhaps, don't tend to do much better in high radiation enviroments than humans. Even the temperature range in which complex electronics operate is generally pretty narrow.

Two-cycle engine needs a 50:1 gas-oil mixture for lubrication or it binds. These new human probably had fed it with pure gas.

that USA heli robot has been working since april. this article makes it sound as though it barely got off the ground. the japanese one on the other hand never did a days work.

Robots are totally impracticable for nuclear sites as they are complex electromechanical devices as thus so vulnerable to radiation and the protection to radiation retards their ability to operate as robots. They need purely mechanical devices such as cranes (at least the nuclear end) to lower radiation monitors, shielded cameras and allow remote access.

The Quince robot, developed by Chiba Institute of Technology for nuclear and biological disaster relief activity, is funded by the citizens. You mean they knew the thing wouldn't work and yet spent money to develope it anyway? The problem was not that high class as you narrated, it's just a little clamsy and thus got stuck at a staircase landing and failed to go downstairs and now is waiting for purely mechanical devices such as cranes to retrieve it.