Chernobyl's Robots (1998 Found Footage)

Описание: In 1998, a camera entered one of the last active facilities in the abandoned city of Pripyat — and recorded an extraordinary collection of Chernobyl robots. From what we know, this VHS footage has never been published before.

Recorded by Andrew Kharitonenko inside the former Jupiter Factory, the video shows the facilities used by SpetsAtom and later the State Emergency Center of Ukraine. Twelve years after the disaster, this was still a working base filled with machines created, imported, rebuilt, and adapted for some of the most dangerous jobs at Chernobyl.

Among them are the West German MF-3 manipulator, the tiny Scout reconnaissance robot, STR-1 built by the engineers behind the Soviet Lunokhod program, Mobot-Ch-HV-2, experimental modular systems, remotely operated tractor loaders, and the remarkable Liebherr robotic crane complex.

Unlike surviving museum exhibits, here we can see many of these machines while they were still part of a working facility — being demonstrated, inspected, climbed into, and discussed by the people who actually worked with them.

The footage also features robotics engineer Michail Bukov, our longtime friend and consultant and author of the book Robots of Chernobyl.

If you have followed our previous Chornobyl.Uncharted episodes about the robots of the disaster, you will recognize many familiar machines here — but probably never quite like this.

00:00 About the footage
01:05 West-German MF-3
02:42 CCTV systems
03:09 Scout
04:21 Modular system of robots
05:14 Dump truck
06:13 Tractor loaders
06:38 STR-1
07:34 Mobot-Ch-HV-2
08:21 Liebherr robotic crane complex
09:33 Mining cart
09:59 Gehl loader
10:28 Komatsu D155W
10:51 Legacy

Special thanks to Andrew Kharitonenko for preserving this remarkable document of the era and allowing us to share it.

Episodes of Chornobyl.Uncharted on robotics:
   • Chernobyl’s Forgotten Robots | Chornobyl U...  
   • The Robots That Entered Chernobyl’s Sarcop...  

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