An AI to save Japan’s Fukushima reactors

Youngboys are now a rare sight in Japan, but there are an estimated 40,000 robot construction workers who have the power to do just about anything. 

One such worker, a 19-year-old Japanese male named Tomoya, is building the world’s biggest robots. 

The robot is called an “ai robot” (or “ai boy”), and it’s built to carry out a variety of tasks in the Fukushima nuclear disaster zone. 

It’s the second such robot to be built by Tomoya. 

This is not the first time Tomoya has built an ‘ai boy’ – he built an older robot, called “Ai YoungBoy II”, in 2014. 

But Tomoya’s robot is not merely an upgrade of the previous one, and is in fact the most advanced of its kind in the world. 

According to a press release from Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency, the AIs’ ability to carry on with their work “is far more advanced than previously thought.” 

This will enable them to carry more cargo, or more dangerous payloads. 

In addition, they’ll be able to work in a wider range of environments. 

“This makes the AI YoungBoy even more valuable, as it is capable of carrying more payloads than the previous AIs,” the agency said. 

So what does this mean for Japan’s economy? 

Japan’s economy is in dire straits. 

Since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant meltdown, the world has lost tens of thousands of jobs, with many of them being in the construction industry. 

For Tomoya to carry his job on, the construction sector will have to suffer as well. 

Tomoya has said he’ll take his work to the “future” as a result of this. 

Japan has been dealing with this issue for years now, but it has been only recently that the government is taking the issue seriously. 

More: In 2014, a Japanese official was quoted as saying that “if you are an architect, you cannot be a worker without a job”. 

“It’s not a question of if they can do a job, but when they can.” 

The official was responding to an interview that was given by an engineer named Yuriko Nishizawa who was in charge of planning for the Fukushima accident. 

Nishizawa, a member of the Japanese Diet, is also a former director of the government’s nuclear safety advisory council. 

Her comments were reportedly met with outrage by her former colleagues, who questioned why Nishizaw was allowed to remain in charge after a decade of serving on the council.

Tomoya is not only building a robot that can be used to carry the country’s economic crisis on its back, but he’s also building a world-class robot. 

If he can’t build robots that can do more, what are we going to do with all these millions of robots in Japan? 

Tomoyas development team at Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant is the largest in the country, and it is currently in its early stages of development. 

Its robot, known as “YoungBoy”, is built for two purposes. 

Firstly, it will be able move around a range of hazardous environments and to carry heavy payloads, and secondly, it can perform basic tasks, like opening and closing doors. 

A robot like Tomoya could be the first of many such machines to be constructed around the world in the future. 

As the world becomes increasingly dependent on automation, it could become a source of cheap, high-tech goods. 

Image credit: Reuters