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I don't know of any robots that are powerful enough to carry water cannons, but still able to be deployed in short order to a hazardous and unusual environment.
by mturmon 16y ago
I don't know of any robots that are powerful enough to carry water cannons, but still able to be deployed in short order to a hazardous and unusual environment. The robot would have to be very strong: the flow rates they need to cool all that uranium are really quite huge; the hoses they would be dragging would be heavy and stiff.
But it does seem like a ground-based robot like a packbot:
http://www.irobot.com/gi/ground/510_PackBot http://www.irobot.com/gi/ground/510_PackBot
which is used to inspect IEDs, among other things, would be helpful to get video. As well as airborne drones.
- gnosis 16y agoI think the reason they were trying to use water cannons was because of the great range they offer in shooting water. They needed that range because humans couldn't go near the pools containing the spent fuel rods because of the radiation. But if a robot could get very close, they might not need to use a water cannon, and could use just a regular water hose. Or they might be able to use a water cannon but with water coming out at a much lower pressure. And I'm not sure that the hose dragging is an unsolvable engineering task either. They could, for instance, erect a tower with a spool of hose on it. As the robot moved away from the tower and towards its destination, it could unravel the hose from the spool and have most if not all of the hose be suspended in the air behind it. Another solution could be to have a second robot following the first, to support a portion of the hose. They could even use a third or a fourth robot behind the first two, if needed. Those are just off-the-cuff ideas.. I'm sure professional engineers could easily think of dozens of other methods to solve the hose-dragging problem.