The newly developed remote control Giraffe Robot can reach up to
8 meters to control valves in hostile environments. Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries (MHI) has developed a remote-controlled robot,
dubbed the 'MHI-Super Giraffe (MARS-C), which is capable of
working at heights up to 8 meters (m) and moving freely in areas
inaccessible by humans in, for example, highly radioactive
environments. By changing the robot arm and/or tool attached at
the arm end, the MARS-C can perform various tasks including
valve opening/closing and radioactive decontamination work. The
MARS-C was developed as a "Research and Development Project for
an Unmanned Disaster Response System" consigned by the New
Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization
(NEDO), with the aim of accommodating various tasks needing to
be performed at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station
operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company: for example, valve
opening/closing, decontamination work, leakage detection and
identification, cutting, etc. The