Thames Water already uses pretty hi-tech approaches to finding leaks including using underground microphones to find them via sound (with obligatory AI, of course), and then they have been trialling a chemical that can travel through the pipes and jam the leaks.
https://www.thameswater.co.uk/always-fixing/finding-leaks-wi...
https://www.aquatechtrade.com/news/urban-water/thames-water-...
https://en.gutermann-water.com/2019/09/23/thames-water-finds...
They also know all about pigs, of course. So I wonder what the researchers felt their edge was that would let their approach do better than others. It seems from a quick check like the water companies are still primarily interested in hydrophonics and how to adapt those to plastic pipes.
All that to say: I too wonder what makes this one so special.
I'm dealing with a clogged and nasty kitchen sink right now, and man, and these guys seem so happy to be in their laboratory test plumbing :)
The article describes them being “dropped in at hydrants.” So I think they’re punting on the “hairier” problem of the sewer side.
Edit: okay, I kept reading and they do mention pressurized waste lines. That does seem harder, especially since you’re going to get root intrusion on old public lines.
Here's an EPA manual from 1971, Prevention and Correction of Excessive Infiltration and Inflow into Sewer Systems. The key thing here is that the goal isn't to eliminate infiltration, but to eliminate excessive infiltration; it's all tradeoffs.
Shudder at the thought ...
An interesting anecdote I can relate is learning abut "transmix", AKA "slop". I worked on a logistics planning app (a really, really fun mix of traveling salesman and bin packing). I saw an entry for "slop" in the pricing feed from an exchange. This caught my eye and led me to talk to one of the "pipeline guys" about what "slop" might be (spoiler - it's a mix of pipeline products that happens when the product in the pipeline is changed) and why one might want to buy "slop".
Pro tip, buy one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Einhell-Power-X-Change-Cordless-Clean...
I'm more a $44 guy: https://www.amazon.com/RIDGID-57043-Drain-Cleaner-Power/dp/B...
It still works during a flood or power outage!
The nice thing about the automatic version is that you can go in/out and clockwise/counterclockwise independently and with a simple switch, which makes it easy to route through complicated pipe geometries without getting stuck, and you don't even have to apply much force because the machine does that for you.
There might be an efficiency gain to be had in overall city plumbing by breaking up detritus which has gotten stuck in the pipe.
If you offered them the use of your robot, you would probably be at risk of bodily harm.
In the past year, the gas line and water main on my street has been replaced. Which has resulted in 6 excavations of the street at excruciatingly slow and loud pace with the vac truck. They excavate once to transfer each finger connection (to the houses) and attach the feeder to a temporary pipe, refilling their progress each day. Once a segment (about a city block or two) been transferred to the temporary line, they excavate again to remove the old line, refilling each day. Finally they lay the new line and connect the finger lines to it.
If you can only cover two steel plates worth of trench overnight, there isn't a chance for the gas team to coordinate with the water team.
With better laws this would have taken a 1/3rd of the excavation, possibly a 1/6th of the excavation. Since excavation and refilling were most of the work in any day, this should also have led to the same cost decrease.
I don't know the exact law or regulation, but I have heard about it from multiple sources, and do intend to being it up with city council.
If they wanted to just drain an excavation, they would use a regular trash pump (capable of handling solids/sand) and run the discharge hose to a nearby stormdrain.
That I've heard, the best way to minimize fatbergs would be to put a hefty tax on "flushable" wipes. Unfortunately, the companies which manufacture them all know that breaking consumers' fell-good delusions (that the wipes are guilt-free flushable) would tank their sales. And politicians are always happy to let lobby-savvy corporations externalize their costs onto the public purse.
The important thing would be to block them from replacing "flushable" with something similarly deceiving. Ideally, they'd have to replace it with a big, scary warning label - about how flushing those wipes could stick you with a flood of backed-up sewage and/or a 5-figure plumbing or septic system repair bill.
toilet paper is designed to break down rapidly, even when compared to things like paper towels and tissues.
These are research prototype robots, they're obviously not ready for the real world yet.
A laboratory environment which is devoid of any resemblance to the real world will yield you different results compared to had you designed and built first for the environments you will encounter, would you agree? And these results could have capabilities not transferrable between different environments.
I try to raise these questions in good faith: For example, are wheels the way to go at all for filthy pipe environments with many sticky and tangly hazards, or do we perhaps have to explore more snake/worm form factors? If we design for the clean environments, all the magical "cost savings for infrastructure restoration" accounting you can do will never materialize.
Moreover, instead of making a robot with arms, which are useful for work, but which are an impediment for moving in a filthy environment, it is better to send multiple vermiform robots, which are designed such as after reaching their destination they are able to cooperate in such a way as to act like a robot with multiple arms (i.e. they should be able to attach to anything in the environment or to another robot with both the anterior end and the posterior end, like leeches).
They only want money & will do so with your data.
I worked on a robot that did precisely this in oil platforms. It had to find its way through gross, sludgy tanks to find leaks or cracks, mostly taking pictures to stream back / map environment and not using AI in the loop.
I've also worked on one for oil distillation columns.
And another one for test samples in composite manufacturing.
They all had the same problem: If you're far from the user, the absence of evidence of a leak is more likely attributable to bad sensing than good results. Far, far more likely.
And, I hate to say it, none of those actuators are going to survive contact with reality either.
Cool idea, but what you want is a snake / swimmer that feeds EOIR + radar, or a floater that screams ultrasonics the whole way through the pipe. Those _have_ been actually deployed.
These look much simpler, which is OK if the stakes are much lower.
- https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=3&prefix=false&qu...
Sincerely though, it's nice to see this - lately I feel like all I read about is AI doing the things we'd rather be doing, glad people are still working on robots to do what we'd rather not :D
... when the effort being poured into robotics starts to intersect with "blue collar", manual, work.-
When the pipe is PVC, though, current does not run through it - so what do we do? Why, pump an electrolyte solution, and run your current through that!
It's simple, but it's not done, and so the plumber friend who told me of the original solution patented it, tried to sell it, and found that potential buyers were almost offended at how easy it was. As soon as he'd describe it to people they'd almost think they came up with it themselves. So it is a valuable idea, but it is also utterly worthless.
I have a hard time seeing that this approach would work. The environment is very messy and there are many field tested methods that don't involve digging up the whole street. One example of such a method is pipe bursting.
There have been loads of research in using AI (neural nets etc.) to find and predict pipe bursts. But I believe simple linear regression is enough since my gut is telling me age and material is a good predictor.
Where I live there is a strong seasonality because the ground freezes over and during thawing we have a lot of leaks. This is a local issue since it depends on both weather and geological environment.
I have a mystery pipe in my house that no one knows where it goes, and they refuse to put a CCTV camera down it beyond a certain distance due to leaving the property. Tempting to DIY something like this... But I have a U-bend in the gulley to contend with first
Note the word 'potentially'.So the headlines is wholly wrong and click bait.
