A technological institution in Sendai has created an autonomous robot with piercing radar for the ground. This robot was recently used in the search for four elementary school pupils who have been missing since the tsunami that accompanied the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.

Miho Suzuki, who is 54 years old and has a daughter named Hana was attending Okawa Elementary School when the catastrophe struck and went missing as a fourth grader, requested that a search be undertaken on the shore of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, on Sunday. The search was done at her request.

It’s okay even if it takes a while, I really hope they find Hana, Suzuki stated as she watched over the hunt with her face set in a way that suggested she was praying.

The robot is 120 centimetres in length, 70 centimetres in width, and 70 centimetres in height. It was built by Jun Sonoda, a professor at The Sendai Campus of the National Institute of Technology. Sonoda is 52 years old.

It is able to move over rugged terrain thanks to its continuous tracks, and it is able to properly locate itself according to its global positioning system capabilities.

The most recent search was carried out on a length of sandy beach that was 200 metres long and was located on the eastern side of the elementary school, close to the Nagatsura beach bathing area.

Ground-penetrating radar was utilised to scan 1 metre down into the ground. Approximately ten different locations have been identified as having buried artefacts, and beginning in the middle of April, volunteers will be excavating these areas in order to study the objects.

Details about Robot

In the beginning, Sonoda invented a machine that is operated by hand that was equipped with ground-penetrating radar. In 2013, the company started performing searches in Natori, which is located in the Miyagi Prefecture, as well as Rikuzentakata, which is located in the Iwate Prefecture.

Then in the year 2021, he created a self-propelled robot that had tyres; this build would be subjected to a total of four further iterations before finally being used in Sunday’s search.

Over 30 objects, including shoes and hats with names on them, have been found thus far by Sonoda’s iterations of robots, which are still searching. In order to improve the chances of making a significant discovery, a data collection of around 100,000 things that are not personal effects or remains has been compiled.

This data set includes information on the objects’ sizes and shapes. This enables artificial intelligence to detect what an item is while it is still buried, and it frees up search parties to dig exclusively in areas that have a better chance of yielding the desired results.

Suzuki’s Search

Since the accident that occurred 12 years ago, A couple of times per month, Suzuki visits the beach that is located close to her daughter’s school to dig for indications of Hana. Nevertheless, she got the impression that it would be practically impossible to move the sand along the entire beach by hand.

Following the investigation that took place on Sunday, Suzuki stated that she was “pleased to learn that the robot picked up many hits.”

Sonoda stated that twelve years had passed after the earthquake, and as a result, there were fewer people volunteering for searches. In the not-too-distant future, I intend to make a contribution to the search efforts by constructing a robot that is capable of digging by itself.

Throughout the summer of this year, the robot is going to search the prefectures of Nagano and Gifu, where the eruption of Mount Ontake took place in September of 2014, for people who vanished during the eruption and have not been found.