Japan may have its famous animated films and comic books with robot heroes, but the nation has been relying on American-made robotics to ease up the nuclear crisis. As military robots are prohibited to be constructed by law, local scientists also did not explore making industrial robotics for nuclear accidents.
Thus, the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has sent in a pair of US-made crawler PackBot robots to examine areas that have too much radiation for humans to take. Experts say in reports of AFP that the government has not provided enough funds to develop its own specialised disaster robots, which have no commercial market.
"In the case of housekeeping robots, the market is there and so the companies can continue the development," said Mr Hajime Asama, professor of engineering at Tokyo University and a member of a robot taskforce set up after the disaster as quoted by AFP. "In the case of the United States, the military invests a lot of money for this kind of robot. But in Japan it is prohibited to make military robots," he said.
Authorities earlier theorised that no such nuclear disasters can occur in Japan. Thus, Mr Asama noted that this prompted the Japanese government not to continue developing the robots for natural disasters recovery operations.
