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| "I'll be happy if our robot is useful on the ground," said Hiroha Toba, the 18-year-old leader of the winning team. The supplied photo shows the competition-winning "Mehikari '' robot. (Photo by=Kyodo) |
[Asia News Communication = Reporter Reakkana] A robot created by a technology college in northeastern Japan won the top prize in a robotics competition on the theme of the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant according to Kyodo.
The Mehikari robot of Fukushima College earned praise for its speed as well as the ability to employ different methods to retrieve mock debris similar in size to that at the plant, the site of a nuclear disaster triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. The robot completed the set task in about 2 minutes, the fastest time, in the annual competition aimed at fostering future engineers that were contested by students from 13 colleges belonging to the National Institute of Technology.
Sunday's competition was the fifth of its kind. Students from 14 teams from the colleges across the country such as in Osaka and Kumamoto prefectures were tasked this year with developing robots to remove fuel debris from the plant, organizers said. The robots had to be remotely operable without a direct line of sight. The competition was mainly organized by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency and had the support of the education ministry and other entities.
