Case Study: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries halves development time and achieves 5 mm positioning accuracy for Fukushima fuel‑debris robotic arm with MathWorks (MATLAB & Simulink)

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Develops Robotic Arm for Removing Nuclear Fuel Debris

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Mitsubishi) needed to design a seven‑meter, six‑axis hydraulic robotic arm to remove molten fuel debris from the Fukushima Daiichi plant under uncertain site conditions and strict safety and positioning requirements. To meet these challenges they used MathWorks’ Model‑Based Design approach with MATLAB and Simulink for control development and system modeling.

MathWorks’ MATLAB and Simulink (with Control System Toolbox) were used for automated hardware measurements, single‑axis and full‑robot modeling, two‑degree‑of‑freedom PID controller design, and hardware‑in‑the‑loop testing (integrated with Gazebo and ROS). Using MathWorks tools halved development time (from six to three months), exceeded the 10 mm positioning requirement by achieving 5 mm accuracy, and established a shared simulation platform for interorganizational collaboration.

Mitsubishi

Tadashi Murata

Engineer