Creative Robot Contests for Decommissioning as Conceived by College of Technology or KOSEN Educators

Abstract

This paper’s theme “Creative Robot Contest for Decommissioning (hereinafter, this Creative Robot Contest)” may be called a contest that would never have been planned in the absence of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011 and the core meltdown accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant of Tokyo Electric Power Company. When it was decided to decommission the nuclear reactors, their decommissioning was immediately put in hand, which, however, met with a high barrier of high radiation doses unconquerable even by the modern science and technologies. In order to advance the stagnating decommissioning work and in hopes of some creative breakthrough ideas from KOSEN students, this Robot Contest, first held in 2016, has been held by KOSEN teams who have shown their willingness to participate in it as a venue useful to address any difficulties they will face in the real world or as teaching material for them to consider social problems. This Robot Contest, sponsored by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency and the Council of Technical Colleges for Human Resource Development for Decommissioning, is planned and managed by the Executive Committee of Creative Robot Contest for Decommissioning (hereinafter, the Executive Committee) with its secretariat at National Institute of Technology, Fukushima College (hereinafter, Fukushima KOSEN) in Fukushima Prefecture where Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is located. In this paper, teachers at Osaka Metropolitan University College of Technology (hereinafter, Osaka Metropolitan University KOSEN) and at Nara National College of Technology, Nara College (hereinafter, Nara KOSEN), whose respective teams have participated in this Robot Contest every year from the first one, and teachers at Fukushima KOSEN who organize and manage the executive committee describe their own views on this Robot Contest based on their viewpoints as KOSEN educators. In the first half, this paper reviews this Robot Contest and outlines the robots of Osaka Metropolitan University KOSEN which participated in it in FY2016 and FY2017 and of Nara KOSEN which did in FY2016. In the latter half, this paper describes the views of the KOSEN teachers who educate engineers in the framework of robot contests from the viewpoints of the teachers who have instructed the teams of Osaka Metropolitan University KOSEN and Nara KOSEN who have participated in this Robot Contest up to the sixth one and who have held this Robot Contest.