T-52 Enryu

The T-52 Enryu (T-52援竜?, lit. rescue dragon), sometimes referred to as "HyperRescueRobot", is a five-ton, 3 meter tall (approx. 10 ft), hydraulically-operated robot, built to cut a path through debris for rescue workers, in the wake of an earthquake or other catastrophe. It can perform heavy lifting of up to one ton, and its arms have the full range of motion available to the human arm. The Enryu was designed by the Japanese company Tmsuk, and a prototype was unveiled in March, 2004 in Japan.

As of 2006, the robot conducted a performance test at Nagaoka University of Technology and successfully lifted a car from a snowbank.[1]

TMSUK developed the robot in cooperation with Kyoto University, the Kitakyushu Fire Department and Japan's National Research Institute of Fire and Disaster in Tokyo. The 3.5 metre-tall robot can either be driven from a cockpit positioned at the front of the robot or it can be controlled remotely as like its cousin the Banryu, it contains multiple CCD cameras which transmit to the remote driver - in this case, it has seven 6.8-megapixel CCD cams mounted on its "head", "torso" and "arms".

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