The 14th Kisoi Motohiro Award Ceremony
On Friday the 11th January 2019, International Rescue System Institute held the 14th Kisoi Motohiro Award Ceremony in Nagata, Kobe, an area damaged extensively by the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake 24 years before.
Chiba Institute of Technology’s Prof. Hiromitsu Fujii was awarded the 14th Kisoi Motohiro Award for Academic Achievement. This award recognises the remarkable achievement of Prof. Fujii’s “Research and development into robotic diagnostic system for automated inspection.” in the research and development of next generation disaster prevention technology and rescue systems.
(Left: Prof. Fujii)(Right: From the left – Vice President Matsuno, Director Takamori, Prof. Fujii, Prof. Okugawa, Prof. Yokokohji, President Tadokoro)
The recipient of the Award for Academic Achievement receives 100,000 yen prize money, a certificate and a commemorative trophy (created by Art Glass Club ) presented by the selection committee members.
The Kisoi Special Award for Social Contribution was awarded to the Executive Committee of Rescue Robot Contest. The Executive Committee of Rescue Robot Contest has produced remarkable results in the nurturing of human resources for the next generation of rescue engineering. It has done this through imparting an understanding of the significance of rescue engineering, and an incentive for making things by hand etc., during robot competitons which target high school and university students. The recipient of the Kisoi Special Award for Social Contribution receives 50,000 yen prize money, a certificate and a commemorative shield presented by the selection committee memebers.
In addition, the Awards for Encouragement, which are aimed at the younger generation, were introduced. The winners of the RoboCup Junior IRS Award are “Oira”‘s Yuto Nakajima and Takumi Enomoto. The winners of the Rescue Robot Contest Award are Iseaki Tech High School’s “Ithascreat”‘s Kaede Sasagawa, Yukimune Kawata, Yuji Kumazawa, Gaku Matsushima, Shoto Arai, Ryota Koike, Ryosuke Hachisu and Haruka Iioka. The winner of the award for the Study of Rescue Robotics is Tohoku University Graduate School of Information Sciences’s Tomoka Yamaguchi. The winners of each award gave a presentation on their research.
The winners of the IEEE RSJ IROS 2018 Best Paper Award on Safety Security and Rescue Robotics in memory of Motohiro Kisoi are Nebraska University’s Evan Beachly, Carrick Detweiler, Sebastian Elbaum, Brittany Duncan, Carl Hilderbrandt, and Dirac Twidwell, as well as the U.S. Geological Survey’s Craig Allen. (The IEEE RSJ IROS 2018 Best Paper Award on Safety Security and Rescue Robotics in memory of Motohiro Kisoi was presented in Madrid in October 2018, therefore the winners were not present at today’s cereony.)
Finally, a lecture was given by Prof. Fujii, winner of the Award for Academic Achievement, on his research subject.
(Left: Prof. Fujii’s lecture, Right: “Oira”‘s Takumi Enomoto, Vice Precident Matsuno, “Oira”‘s Yuto Nakajima
The ceremony closed with a warm applause for Prof. Fujii’s highly acclaimed achievements in the research and development of rescue robot systems, and for the winners of the Awards for Encouragement, of whom we expect will make great contributions to the future of rescue robotics.