Robohub.org
American robots in Japan highlight nuclear safety myth
… Japan’s nuclear power authority didn’t have any emergency robots ready to assist with damage and control. Why were they caught unprepared?
… The ‘safety myth’: From the NY Times: “It’s a fact that there was an unreasonable overconfidence in the technology of Japan’s nuclear power generation.”
… The seniority system: Both iRobot and QinetiQ, companies that volunteered equipment to Tepco, found that senior Tepco employees were chosen to be trained to operate the robots yet they were less suited to the task than the 20-year olds who had gamer experience.
tags: nuclear
Frank Tobe
is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.
Frank Tobe
is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.
Related posts :
Teaching robot policies without new demonstrations: interview with Jiahui Zhang and Jesse Zhang
Lucy Smith
04 Dec 2025
Hear from authors of work presented at CoRL 2025.
Why companies don’t share AV crash data – and how they could
Cornell University
01 Dec 2025
Researchers have created a roadmap outlining the barriers and opportunities to encourage AV companies to share the data to make AVs safer.
Robot Talk Episode 135 – Robot anatomy and design, with Chapa Sirithunge
Robot Talk
28 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Chapa Sirithunge from University of Cambridge about what robots can teach us about human anatomy, and vice versa.
Learning robust controllers that work across many partially observable environments
Maris Galesloot
27 Nov 2025
Exploring designing controllers that perform reliably even when the environment may not be precisely known.
Human-robot interaction design retreat
Lucy Smith
25 Nov 2025
Find out more about an event exploring design for human-robot interaction.
Robot Talk Episode 134 – Robotics as a hobby, with Kevin McAleer
Robot Talk
21 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Kevin McAleer from kevsrobots about how to get started building robots at home.
ACM SIGAI Autonomous Agents Award 2026 open for nominations
ACM SIGAI
19 Nov 2025
Nominations are solicited for the 2026 ACM SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award.
Generations in Dialogue: Multi-agent systems and human-AI interaction with Professor Manuela Veloso
Listen to the first episode of the new podcast from AAAI.
