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A Robotic Cable Inspection System
Roland Piquepaille writes "In a short article, Popular Science reports that researchers at the University of Washington have built a robotic cable inspection system. This system should help utility companies to maintain their networks of subterranean cables. The robot, dubbed Cruiser, is about 4-feet-long and is designed like a snake. When it detects an anomaly on an underground cable, it sends a message to a human operator via Wi-Fi. The first field tests took place in New Orleans in December 2006. But a commercial version should not be available before 2012."
Hmmm, 4 feet long, designed like a snake...
bring on the pr0n jokes...
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
like most robot systems, this has been done in various forms before. I''ll look up a few shortly. But what is autonomous about it ?
I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
"That's IT! I have had it with these muthafuckin' splices in these muthafuckin' fiba-optic cables!"
I was just thinking about maintenance robots yesterday. It was during a nice walk along the creek in our town. I was admiring the quaint little stream of water and the stones over which it flowed and the grass through which it wound, and then the rusty shopping cart.
The world will be a more beautiful place when the autonomous robots start to finally appear.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Yet more piquepaille blog spam. a robotic cable inspection system is the one and only link to hit.
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.
"Squiddy. Coming in quick."
WiFi, or any other radio does not work in salt water.
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don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
It would be great if Slashdot started using Metric in describing things like this. Seems like it might be a good way to promote the metric system.
I can't find a link, but I'm sure I saw a National Geographic documentary on technicians using robots to fix subterranean cables on Paris' massive underground network of tunnels.
Now we'll never get laid. They'll just harvest our sperm and use the robotic copulation devices...
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=intelligent+pig
Oink.
And while offtopic, definitely funny is that one time after they'd sealed the tube back up, they couldn't get the beam to go through a particular section. Investigators found a couple beer bottles spaced several meters apart inside the tube.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I think that this is using the term 'robot' a bit loosely. This isn't really any more of a robot than the wireless thermometer that I have outside my kitchen. If you could drop the thing on top of a cable, and it would just wander all over(under?) the city looking for bad cables until you called it home; if it had the ability to make a (psuedo-)decision on what to do next based on its surroundings....THAT would be a robot.
I guess that IMHO a robot should be a machine that could do something that would seem "random" to a casual observer.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
This Roland gem has a direct link back to his ZDnet blog, so the usual argument that this isn't link whoring doesn't apply. Unfortunately, the /. editors didn't redact this time....
Please join me in tagging this article as 'ohnoitsroland' -- thank you.
sigfault (core dumped)
It looks like it sits on top of the cable and crawls along. But, isn't the top of the cable normally covered with dirt? Does it require an outside tube or little mines or what? Does it just dig its way along? I don't see how it can be used on existing cables. Could someone explain? :)
Hax-fu?
... weasels drink beer?
Who'd a thunk it?
Probably would make this linemans job much safer
link
PS, thats a helicopter he's sitting on...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
In 1995 in one workplace I attended there were two remote pipe inspection robots with very limited functionality gathering dust on shelves because there were better ones available. A new design is interesting but Roland really should realise that it is not a new idea to be hyped. Can somebody buy him a subscription to New Scientist for things like this and a second hand thermodynamics textbook for the earlier ones?
The main problem with this device is that it only works with cables installed in cable trays. Most utilities install their cable either in conduit or direct buried. Even with cable trays like they have at the University of Washington, its rare to find an unobstructed run of more than a few hundred yards between walls, gates, vertical rises, or other blockages. While it might produce some cost savings over manual inspections, in the final analysis, most cable just isn't accessible for inspection.
What would be a useful improvement would be some sort of temperature sensitive optical fiber that could be embedded in the cable insulation. The temperature rise caused by an impending insulation breakdown could be detected from the ends using something like OTDR technology.
On a final note: What happens when two of these robots meet face to face on the same cable?
Have gnu, will travel.
We all know that the US (and others) use submarines to install permanent wiretaps onto these cables. What will the robot do when it reaches one? Will it have the ability to discretely move around the tap? Otherwise I doubt that it will ever see the light of day. However the clever designers know this and they therefore know they are guaranteed to be bought out by a US company for an excellent price (see Skype).
I trained a dog to smell weak spots in power cable insulation. When it found one, it pee'd on it.
Damn! Poor dog. Back to the drawing board.
Have gnu, will travel.
By 2012, we wont even be needing any cables. LOL
...and we'll have ourselves a robot named "Bender".
Then we can cue the jokes.
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
First, most cable runs, especially pulled cable runs do not run true. Their intertwined. So this appears to only be able to follow one cable with the side support legs it has. And how is it going to scan the cables under it. While it could listen for the ultrasonic tell tail signs of leakage. What the heck is it going to do. There are two choices, pull the cables out and replace them, or just pull another or use a spare. There are other ways that are a lot easier to determine leakage in power cables. While this is a good excerise in engineering, I see no over compelling advantage to this.
Those robots would not last long.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm not entirely sure, but I guess the idea is that it inspects cables that are installed in tunnels or other large conduits, underground.
Not sure how useful that is, or who it's most useful to, because in my area all the underground utilities are laid right in the dirt, cut-and-cover fashion, with a backhoe (or, one assumes, the really early parts with steam shovels or picks and spades). The only places I personally know of that have big underground vaults and tunnels are universities that have centralized steam heating; there you get a lot of insulation value (and thus cost savings) by putting the steam lines in a vault with an airspace around them. (There are technologies now for putting steam lines directly into the ground, using lots of modern insulation, but I think that's all post-1960s plastics stuff -- anything built before that probably has steam lines insulated with air underground.) Once you have those tunnels, they tend to get re-used for other utilities besides heating, so I could see where maybe you'd want to use a robot.
I guess this is designed mostly for use in planned communities (universities) that were planned out with lots of big underground infrastructure and tunnelwork, or in urban areas where there's a lot down there -- but for the majority of underground stuff in the U.S. outside of major urban centers I'm not sure it would work. There I think you'd want some sort of a "pig" (device/sensor package that goes inside a pipe and is pushed along by pressure behind it, common on oil pipelines), or external imaging (ground-penetrating radar, maybe).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It's tunnels are practically legendary, at least by U.S. standards (nothing like the tunnels and crypts underneath Paris, but few places are):
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Here's a site on it, hopefully it's still working:
http://www.angelfire.com/vt/vtsteamtunnels/index2
Unfortunately after the incident there last month I expect it might not be a good place to be crawling around in old steam tunnels, lest some overzealous security guard shoot you or something, but maybe when the current insanity passes it'll be safe again.
but has anyone else noticed the current general suckiness of PopSci in general? I've had a subscription for a few years and the current issue is basically ads, a fairly cool series of mini-articles on inventions, and an article on Litvinenko's poisoning (spread across excessive pages just to cram more ads in). That's about it. It used to be worth reading, now it's just a series of male-enhancement ads.
...until you called it home So, it doesn't come out on its own after it's done measuring your temperature?Have been around a long time..
So its battery powerd and has wifi ( like pretty much everything else on the planet it seems ) am i supposed to be impresed? Sounds like natural evolution to me, not worthy of being called 'news'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----