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Robots to Crawl Under the City

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the dreaming-of-electric-sheep dept.

Johan Louwers writes "Robots will crawl tubes in a short while to investigate power cables running in the tubes to make sure they are still undamaged or in need for a repair. The Robotic Cable Inspection System is developed by Alexander Mamishev, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington. Making use of infrared thermal analysis and acoustic partial discharge analysis, the robot will be checking mile after mile of cable while crawling his way in the tubes."

3 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Robots good at checking pipes by Realistic_Dragon · · Score: 4, Informative

    The SMART PIG is used to check on gas pipes. It saves a fortune on using the old, dumb pigs that they used to have to force through the pipes to inspect/clean them prior to the invention of Magnetic Flux Leakage techniques.

    There is a pretty good SMART PIG display at the Manchester Sci/Tech museum (free) with an actual 80's vintage inspection unit donated by British Gas.

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    Beep beep.
  2. Re:Will this work in the real world? by baldass_newbie · · Score: 2, Informative

    From the look of this thing you would need straight lines, plenty of clearance, and two rails running next to each transmission line.

    Good point. In Philly as late as the 1960's there were portions of the water line that were running through hollowed out tree trunks. Seriously.
    I can't see this being of any use in a town like Philly. Read this story about a recent underground explosion and you'll know what I mean.

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    The opposite of progress is congress
  3. Re:Will this work in the real world? by gaber1187 · · Score: 2, Informative
    You're right, the real world is a messy place--lots of underground transmission lines are just plopped down into a big tray and are not very accessible to just about any method that would inspect the quality of the insulation. However, with very little effort utilities can make lines more amenable to inspecting lines with this robot.


    But being able to deal with pretty difficult situations is a problem for robotics, and we like tough robotics problems, so its definitely doable. I'm in the same research lab working for Prof. Mamishev as these guys, and they are definitely thinking about lots of ways to deal with the chaotic wiring problem. Things like the little spiders of Minority Report would be ideal for getting into tough spots, but who knows, maybe we'll see that sooner rather than later... stay tuned...

    One guy from our lab who did a bunch of work on this is also starting his own company based on some walking robots... not sure if the company is started yet--they kind of look like spiders...