The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), the research agency of the State of Texas and a member of The Texas A&M University System, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), a comprehensive research and development institution in nuclear energy, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the purpose of exchanging information about robotics for the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.
Representatives from JAEA were in College Station Aug. 13, to sign the MOU with TEES, which could pave the way for collaborative work on creating facilities for the test and evaluation of robots, sensors and other cyber-physical systems, as well as training robot operators for the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.
Three TEES research centers were involved in the initial collaboration with JAEA: the Center for Robot Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR), the Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute, and the Mary Kay O’Conner Process Safety Center. The idea for the facility originated from a visit to College Station that Dr. Robin R. Murphy, Raytheon Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and director of CRASAR, arranged for Japan’s vice minister of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in February 2013. She recommended that they create a facility similar to the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service’s Disaster City, which is what JAEA is working to accomplish.