Disasters, Crises, and Robot Development in Japan and the U.S.

FAIN: FO-295534-24

Ryo Morimoto
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)

Research and writing leading to a book on US-Japanese collaboration in the development of robots, focusing on their use in areas including disaster recovery, care for the elderly, and nuclear reactor maintenance. 

How could a robot-centered approach to the reconstruction of Fukushima shape the Japanese imaginary of crisis? Twelve years after the TEPCO nuclear accident, the pursuit of disaster robotics in coastal Fukushima is surfacing a new “creative reconstruction” model that links aging nuclear reactors, an aging population, and energy security. Roboticists are developing robots to help “rescue” humanity from impending crises like extreme environments and eldercare. Building on my work on postfallout Fukushima, this proposed research will integrate the history of disaster robotics into an ethnography of U.S-Japan collaborations on developing disaster robots in labs, facilities, and test fields. My project expands the focus on human-like robots in Japanese studies and contributes to understanding how disaster robots, under the banner of reconstruction, will face seemingly disparate social, economic, and environmental issues, such as labor shortages, aging population, and climate-related crises.