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Robots to Crawl Under the City
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."
How the Sentinels got their start.
snarkth
I, for one, welcome our new robotic underlords.
Now where are we humans going to hide when Skynet becomes active?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I would hope they would make them easy to identify and track, Imagine stumbling upon some weird robotic beasty that washed out of a storm drain and thinking it's the beginning of the robot revolution or something, Maybe they could just write "NOT EVIL" in magic marker or something, that would make ME feel better.
The final scene involves a huge explosion or EMP burst that destroys all the robots but also leaves everyone in the sewer in complete darkness. Cut, print, that's a wrap. Where's my money?
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.
Beep beep.
We desperately NEED something to keep the tubes clear. Sometimes it takes a whole WEEK for an Internet to get to me!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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.
The opposite of progress is congress
Here in Santa Cruz, we're currently using robots to inspect our sewers. My buddy made a TV show (on Community TV--like Public Access) of the raw footage from the sewer robot set to soothing music. Must-see TV!!
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
If these robots can go into tubes, maybe when the internets are clogged they can help us out?
I'm not a paid member; can someone please tag this story "ReallyBadInternetJokeBait"?
Great, how long before they start using similar robots to check your prostate?
(Ha! You thought this was going to be another reference to The Matrix/Terminator, didn't you?)
Last year, my webpage describing how I did something similar (but spectacularly cheaper with the commensurate drop in ability) using some off the shelf electronics and an R/C toy was featured here on Slashdot, my first slashdotting!
http://hallert.net/misc/tankcam/tankcam.html
There are other crawlspaces out there, get under your houses and make your own robots do your bidding!
is if they leeched power from the cables at open nodes in the system and just roamed on a set path at all times.
Autonomous little service droids, keeping everything working - now that's the future.
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...
I've seen underground power cables in the Boston area, and at least in the ones I saw, there was no tray, just lots of serious support ironwork. Additionallly, there was no nice clean lit walkway on the side as in the video. The problem that I see is that the places that its hardest to visually inspect are just the circumstances that these robots would be handiest, and that's exactly the circumstances that they'll have the most problems navigating.
For a moment there I thought we were talking the start of the matrix :P
Shadus