The ongoing cooling work over in Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plants is scaring the entire world a million times over, so what on Earth are these experts doing playing Xbox 360? They’re actually not playing Black Ops, while citizens of Japan fear for their lives, but are using Xbox 360 controllers to control unmanned Talon robots sent from QinetiQ to help assess the nuclear radiation situation. Equipped with night vision and CBRNE detection kits, the robots can check for “over 7,500 environmental hazards, including chemicals, volatile gases, radiation and explosive risks, as well as temperature and air quality indicators.” All of that can be done with an Xbox 360 controller? Not quite, the likely situation is that the analog sticks are used to navigate the robots because of their precise accuracy. The left and right keys on a keyboard can only move it so much. Anyone figure out how to rig Kinect to these Talon robots for some autonomous action? Call me when you someone does it – that would be rad!
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