Japan is a country known for its robots, from the animated hero Astro Boy and Sony Corp.’s cute pet dog AIBO to the faceless industrial machines used to weld and lift cars on automotive assembly lines.

But while Japanese manufacturers have 70% of the 700 billion yen global market for industrial robots, according to Japan’s trade ministry, the country’s robots have been conspicuously absent from the site of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Read More »