Robots assist disaster-response operations in torrential rain disaster area (25–26 July 2018)

On 25 and 26 July, Professor Fumitoshi Matsuno and five members of his Mechatronics Laboratory, a part of the Graduate School of Engineering's Mechanical Engineering and Science Department, conducted a series of robot-based disaster-response operations in a mountainous area hit by the July 2018 west Japan torrential rains. The participating members were Program-Specific Assistant Professor Tomofumi Fujiwara and Researcher Makoto Tada, and three students: Tatsuya Takemori, first year, doctoral program, with Takami Tanishige and Yusuke Nomura, both in the second year of the master's program.

The project was implemented in a landslide area near Mount Handa in the prefecture of Okayama, with support provided by: Okayama University (represented by Lecturer Tetsushi Kamegawa), Tohoku University (Associate Professors Masashi Konyo and Kenjiro Tadakuma), the University of Electro-Communications (Associate Professor Motoyasu Tanaka), and the "Tough Robotics Challenge" team (Manager: Tohoku University Professor Satoshi Tadokoro), a part of the government-funded ImPACT ("Impulsing Paradigm Change through Disruptive Technologies") Program.

The Matsuno team used two robots, its own FUHGA, comprised of a crawler and a six-degree-of-freedom manipulator, and the Tough Robotics Challenge team's ImPACT Snake Smooth Type, to survey the interior of damaged buildings and retrieve some of the items left behind by the evacuees.

The ImPACT Snake Smooth Type is the world's first snake-shaped robot that has successfully climbed up and down a ladder. In the Okayama project, this water- and dust-proof machine was sent into a destroyed home in danger of a secondary collapse, and remote-controlled to explore the interiors.

FUHGA is a rescue robot with a powerful and dexterous arm. It won the 2017 and 2018 RoboCup Japan Open's Rescue Robot League, while placing fourth and earning the Best in Class Dexterity award in the 2017 RoboCupRescue Robot League (it did not enter the 2018 RoboCupRescue competition). In the 25-26 July operations, the robot crawled inside two buildings — the wrecked home surveyed by the ImPACT Snake Smooth Type, and a severely damaged, closed-off apartment building — where in the latter it successfully recovered an item requested by a former resident.

Related link

• Kyoto University 'SHINOBI' takes 1st in RoboCup Japan Rescue League (6 May 2017)
  https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/research/events_news/department/kougaku/news/2017/170506_1.html