Impact Tough Robotics Challenge

ImPACT Tough Robotics Challenge is a national project of Japan Cabinet Office that focuses on tough technologies of robotics to give solutions to disaster response, recovery and preparedness. Natural and man-made disasters are a serious problem for our society. Robotics is widely recognized as potentially effective countermeasure to solve this problem. It has, however, limited capability due to the fragility of this technology. Many robot technologies can work only under well-prepared conditions, which do not occur in disaster sites. This project aims at making such technologies �tougher� by removing constraints. It consists of subprojects of six types of robot platforms and several component technologies integrated with the robots: Cyber Rescue Canine, digitally empowered rescue dogs, serpentine robots for search in debris, serpentine robots for plant/infrastructure inspection, UAVs for gathering information in wide area of disaster area, legged robots for plant/infrastructure inspection in risky places, construction robots for recovery tasks that require both high-power and preciseness. This key speech introduces some of the major research outcomes of this project.