A naked man,in Mooroopna – a town 181km north of Melbourne, Australia, as a prank got into a washing Machine , got stuck in it and it took 20 minutes to release him from the top-loading device.
The rescuers had to use Olive Oil to dislodge him from the machine.
Editor’s Note: This is part of our ongoing news coverage of Japan’s earthquake and nuclear emergency.
Japan’s leading experts in rescue robotics are deploying wheeled and snake-like robots to assist emergency responders in the search for survivors of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck the country last Friday.
Details are still scarce, but I’ve gotten word that at least two teams plan to use their search and rescue robots, one team in Tokyo and another in or around Sendai, the city that suffered the most damage in the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami. I’m waiting confirmation about a third team, also in Tokyo. (There is no information about the presence of robots at Japan’s troubled Fukushima nuclear power plants, though that would be an ideal application for teleoperated repair and inspection robots.)
Dr. Robin Murphy, director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at Texas A&M University, in College Station, and one of the world’s top experts in rescue robotics, confirms that a team led by Satoshi Tadokoro of Tohoku University, in Sendai, and a team led by Eiji Koyanagi from Chiba Institute of Technology’s Future Robotics Technology Center, have deployed, or are about to deploy, their robots.
She reports that Dr. Tadokoro is “en route” to Sendai, where he lives, with the Active Scope Camera, a remote operated 8-meter-long snake-like robot that carries a scope camera and can slither through small spaces. According to Dr. Murphy, it’s “possibly the most capable robot for tight spaces.” At the same time, Dr. Koyanagi will use an agile robot called Quince, which has tank-like tracks and is capable of driving over rubble and climbing stairs, around his home area in Tokyo.
Here’s a video of the Active Scope Camera:
Here’s a video of Quince:
A FLOOD victim in the Lockyer Valley was found 80km away from where the person went missing, while some of the dead may never be found, authorities say.
Fifteen people have been found dead, many of them in the Lockyer Valley, which was decimated by a wall of water that rushed through it this week, while 51 remain missing.
Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts said the force of the water had carried victims a long way.
“One of the people who are confirmed deceased was found 80km downstream from where they were reported missing,” he told reporters on Friday.
“I think this just demonstrates and highlights the complexity of these search and rescue operations and also the time that’s going to be consumed searching all of the creeks and streams associated with this river system.”
Related:
Some of the homes are actually destroyed, like bombs have gone off there
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