MIT Graduate Creates Robot That Swims Through Pipes To Find Out If They're Leaking (fastcompany.com)

A 28-year-old MIT graduate named You Wu spent six years developing a low-cost robot designed to find leaks in pipes early, both to save water and to avoid bigger damage later from bursting water mains. "Called Lighthouse, the robot looks like a badminton birdie," reports Fast Company. "A soft 'skirt' on the device is covered with sensors. As it travels through pipes, propelled by the flowing water, suction tugs at the device when there's a leak, and it records the location, making a map of critical leaks to fix." From the report: MIT doctoral student You Wu spent six years developing the design, building on research that earlier students began under a project sponsored by a university in Saudi Arabia, where most drinking water comes from expensive desalination plants and around a third of it is lost to leaks. It took three years before he had a working prototype. Then Wu got inspiration from an unexpected source: At a party with his partner, he accidentally stepped on her dress. She noticed immediately, unsurprisingly, and Wu realized that he could use a similar skirt-like design on a robot so that the robot could detect subtle tugs from the suction at each leak. Wu graduated from MIT in June, and is now launching the technology through a startup called WatchTower Robotics. The company will soon begin pilots in Australia and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One challenge now, he says, is creating a guide so water companies can use the device on their own.

Comments

pig

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you reinvented the pig.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:pig

[AmiMoJo]

I used to work in the water industry and the water companies were not interested in putting stuff in the pipes. Accessing the inside of the pipe is expensive, you need to dig a huge hole and shut off the flow of water, and there are strict regulations for putting stuff in drinking water and the pipes that carry it. It's also unnecessary these days.

To find leaks you just need to listen to the pipe at two different locations and correlate the sound of the leak. These days that can be done remotely with a sensor network (battery powered, 5 year life, my Magnum Opus). Very big leaks can require on site work with more sensitive equipment, as bigger leaks are actually quieter (less pressure).

We had students suggest stuff periodically, but the problem was always cost or it being invasive. Water is cheap and â20/month leaks aren't worth fixing unless people are complaining.

Re:Saudi Management

[vivian]

Since maintenance crew generally know where the pipe is laid (or can find out by looking at piping plans), it is sufficient to know the linear distance from the start - this will give you an accurate enough position of the leaks to start digging. If the flow rate is know, distance can be logged using an on-board timer.(alternatively, it could be computed by relative times from entry and exit point) Once you are close, water from the leak will help you to zero in on where the actual leak is.

Re:Ha, 6 years to duplicate tech we already have

[rjune]

From FTA: "While other leak-detection technology exists, it mostly relies on acoustics to find leaks–something that can work in suburbs, but doesn’t work well in noisy city centers. Some locations use plastic pipes, which can’t use acoustic detection at all. This is true in much of the South. “This basically means that for cities in Georgia or Virginia, the way they find leaks is to just wait until the water main breaks,” he says." This invention sounds like a significant improvement of existing technology.