The 15th Kisoi Motohiro Award Ceremony
On Friday the 10th January 2020, International Rescue System Institute held the 15th Kisoi Motohiro Award Ceremony in Nagata, Kobe, an area damaged extensively by the great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake 25 years before.
This year, the Kisoi Motohiro Award for Academic Achievement was awarded to Associate Professor Motoyasu Tanaka of the University of Electro-Communications, Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering. The Kisoi Motohiro Award for Technical Achievement was awarded to Mr Tatsuya Takemori of Kyoto University Graduate School of Engineering.
These awards recognise the outstanding achievements of Associate Professor Tanaka’s “Control of a Serpentine Robot Through the Dexterous Use of Contact Point Changes and its Application to Disaster Response”, and Mr Takemori’s “The Research and Development of Serpentine and Crawler Robots which Demonstrate High Performance Levels in Real-World Environments”.
(Left: Prof. Tanaka)(Right: Front row from left, Academic Achievement Winner Prof. Tanaka, Technical Achievement Winner Mr Takemori, Special Award Winner Prof. Asama, Medical Achievement Award Winner Prof. Kubo, Psychological Achievement Winner Prof. Noguchi. Back row from left, IRS Director Prof. Takamori, IRS Vice President Prof. Matsuno, Medical Award Committee President Prof. Koike, IRS President Prof. Tadokoro)
The Kisoi Motohiro Award for Medical Achievement was awarded to Professor Tatsuhiko Kubo of Hiroshima University, Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Department of Public Health and Health Policy. The Kisoi Motohiro Award for Psychological Achievement was presented to Associate Professor Shuji Noguchi of Kagawa University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Clinical Psychology.
These awards recognise the remarkable achievements of Professor Kubo’s “The Development of J-SPEED and the International Standardisation of WHO’s MDS”, and Associate Professor Noguchi’s “Long-Term Mental Health Support for Local Government employees Affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.”
In addition, this year the Kisoi Motohiro Special Award for Social Contribution was awarded to Professor Hajime Asama of Tokyo University School of Engineering, for his tremendous contribution to accident response at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
The recipients of the Kisoi Motohiro Awards for Academic Achievement and Technical Achievement each receive 100,000 yen prize money, a certificate and a commemorative trophy (created by Art Glass Club ), and presented by the selection committee. The recipients of the Kisoi Motohiro Awards for Medical Achievement and Psychological Achievement each receive 100,000 yen prize money, a certificate and commemorative shield, and the recipient of the Kisoi Motohiro Special Award for Social Contribution receives 50,000 yen prize money, a certificate and commemorative shield, presented by each award’s selection committee members.
(Front row from left: Academic Achievement Winner Prof. Tanaka, Technical Achievement Winner Mr Takemori, Special Award Winner Prof. Asama, Medical Achievement Award Winner Prof. Kubo, Psychological Achievement Winner Prof. Noguchi. Middle row from left: Robocup Junior IRS Awards – (Mentor) Mr Goto, (Recipients) Mr Goto, Mr Ohbuchi, The Study of Rescue Robotics Award Mr Seto, Rescue Robot Contest Award (recipients) Mr Tsujimura, Mr Ikuta, (Mentor) Mr Ito. Back row from left: Medical Award Committee President Prof. Koike, IRS Vice President Prof. Matsuno, Rescue Robot Contest Executive Committee Prof. Doi, IRS Director Prof. Takamori,IRS President Prof. Tadokoro)
The recipients of the awards for encouragement, which focus on the younger generation, are as follows. “Infinity”‘s Sota Goto and Takumi Ohbuchi received the Robocup Junior IRS award, Shizuoka University Robot Factory’s team “Rescue Yaramaika”‘s Kaira Miyagawa, Takeru Munechika, Kosuke Nakai, Koki Aoki, Kazuki Ikeda, Masaya Tsujimura, Keigo Sasaki and Shohei Watanabe received the Rescue Robot Contest Award, and Noriaki Seto of Fukushima University Gradutae School received the Award for the Study of Robotics. After the award ceremony, the winners of each award gave a presentation about their research.
The recipients of the IEEE IROS 2019 Best Paper Award on Safety Security and Rescue Robotics in memory of Motohiro Kisoi are Xuan Lin*, Jingwen Zhang, Junjie Shen, Gabriel Ikaika Fernandez, Dennis Hong (University of California Los Angeles). They received their award in November 2019 in Macao and so did not attend this ceremony in Japan.
Finally, the recipient of the Award for Academic Achievement Prof. Tanaka, the recipient of the Award for Technical Achievement Mr Takemori, the recipient of the Award for Medical Achievement Prof. Kubo, the recipient of the Award for Psychological Achievement Prof. Noguchi and the recipient of the Special Award for Social Contribution Prof. Asama gave talks on their fields of research.
(Left: Mr Takemori’s presentation)(Right: Vice President Matsuno’s closing speech
The ceremony closed with a warm applause for the highly acclaimed achievements in their respective fields, Prof. Tanaka, Mr Takemori, Prof. Asama, Prof. Kubo, Prof. Noguchi, and for the winners of the Awards of Encouragement, of whom we expect will make great contributions to the future of rescue robotics.