The Creative Robot Contest for Decommissioning

Fukushima Daiichi as it appeared in September 2022. Units 3 and 4 can be seen behind the rows of treated water tanks. (© Nippon.com)

Construction work on water discharge shafts, seen here, has been delayed. (© Nippon.com)

The Research Management Building as seen from the entrance to NARREC. (© Nippon.com)

The VR System, which realistically re-creates the interior of a nuclear reactor building.(© Nippon.com)

The enormous testing building. (© Yamada Shinji)

The water tank used for robot testing can be seen in the center. The orange handrails seen on the left are part of the “mock staircase” that can be used to simulate a variety of types of staircases found within nuclear reactor buildings.(© Nippon.com)

A female student from Fukushima’s National Institute of Technology reads the Participants’ Oath at the Opening Ceremony. (© Yamada Shinji)

Left: The robot of the National Institute of Technology, Maizuru College (Kyoto) team clears the grating obstacle on a test run. Right: A robot that has reached the decontamination area extends its ladder-like arm to raise a pen used to color in a piece of imitation vellum in a way that is similar to actual surface decontamination work. (© Yamada Shinji)

The operation area is walled off by a partition. Operators depend on data obtained by the robot’s camera and other sensors to operate the device. (© Yamada Shinji)

Once the competitors return to a behind-the-scenes pit stop area after their trial runs, they throw themselves into making repairs and adjustments to their robots. (© Yamada Shinji)

Students visiting Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant during the Contest’s “Summer School.” (Courtesy the National Institute of Technology, Fukushima College)

Suzuki Shigekazu holds a PhD in engineering and is an associate professor at the National Institute of Technology, Fukushima College. (© Yamada Shinji)

Even during breaks between test runs, the judges examine the robots. (© Yamada Shinji)

The robot entered by the team from the National Institute of Technology, Ichinoseki College (Iwate), suffered a broken caterpillar track shortly after the start of its run. The team won a special award for the ingenuity of its pen that is able to move in a spiral motion. (© Yamada Shinji)

The National Institute of Technology, Tsuruoka College (Yamagata), team, which won the Director of the National Organization of Vocational High Schools Award (the “Idea Award”), shows off the sophisticated movements its robot’s arm is capable of. (© Yamada Shinji)

The National Institute of Technology, Oyama College, team, which won the grand prize, and its robot. (© Yamada Shinji)

The Oyama College team’s robot coloring in the imitation vellum. The team won the competition handily as its robot’s capabilities far surpassed those of its competitors. (© Yamada Shinji)

Contest participant Satō Kengo, who was disappointed in spite of having won a special prize. (© Yamada Shinji)

On the right is the robot, called “Mexicali,” designed and built by the Institute of Technology, Fukushima College team that won the fifth Creative Robot Contest for Decommissioning. On the left is the small-sized data-gathering robot developed in cooperation with the Atox corporation. (© Yamada Shinji)