Recent trends and issues of volcanic disaster response with mobile robots

Typically, volcanic eruptions cause heavy damage in its vicinity area, and the eruption often continues for years. During this period, a restricted area is set up in the vicinity of the crater, in order to ensure the safety of people. Therefore, it is important for mitigation of volcanic disaster to realize observation of the eruption and mudslide-control construction based on teleoperation-type robotic technology. To promote development of such technologies, various types of volcano exploration robots have been researched and developed in Japan and overseas. With regard to volcanic observations, this paper presents conventional methods for volcanic teleoperated observation, and discusses technical issues and research topics for the future technologies, particularly, mobile robotics and flying robotics. With regard to mudslide-control construction, the paper describes the teleoperated construction system that has been developed at Fugendake of Mount Unzen, and discusses technical problems in current unmanned construction system to be solved in the near future.