Kind of Like a Roomba, But For a Nuclear Disaster

Above: a slideshow of the "Packbot." Also see this video interview with iRobot's founder.

If Watson is the artificial intelligence on the proverbial "front lines" of synthesized knowledge, Packbots are robots on the real "front lines." Last weekend, engineers from Japan's notorious Fukushima reactor drove the remote-controlled robots – designed to be worn like backpacks to the battlefield – into the plant to conduct radiation readings and snap the first images of the plant's distressed interior.

As expected, the radiation levels are nasty. Via Nature News:

For reference, a "sievert" is a composite unit that measures alpha, beta, and gamma radiation – in essence, it measures the radiation that screws with human biology. 5,000 millisieverts kills most people within a month, and 10,000 millisieverts is guaranteed to kill a person in weeks. If you stood in the interior of the Fukushima reactor in its current state for just a few days you would almost assuredly die of radiation poisoning.

Luckily, we have some valiant robots making the trip. Packbots have an array of chemical sensors, thermal cameras, and can even open doors. They're made by the American robotics company "iRobot," which is also responsible for robots on the front lines of 2 wars, urban bomb detection, and IED disposal. They also make a little vacuum robot called Roomba, which has no weapons, none visible at least.

While the ethics of robot warfare are certainly subject to scrutiny, they're application in this case is vital. While it's nice to know the severity of the situation before any humans are sent into the Fukushima reactor with its current catastrophic levels of radiation, people will eventually have to enter the reactor to start the arduous repair and decontamination processes that so badly need to get rolling.

According to Tim Trainer, the vice president of iRobot, "The purpose of robots is to do those dull, dirty and dangerous missions — so dangerous is certainly what we're talking about here

I would file this one under "dirty" as well, though "dull" it most certainly is not.