| 1 | 0MIT Graduate Creates Robot That Swims Through Pipes To Find Out If They're Leaking (fastcompany.com) null/SLASHDOT/0102640424 70\r |
| 2 | i Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:30PM (BeauHD)\r |
| 3 | i from the leak-detecting dept.\r |
| 4 | i\r |
| 5 | i A 28-year-old MIT graduate named You Wu spent six years\r |
| 6 | i [1]developing a low-cost robot designed to find leaks in pipes\r |
| 7 | i early , both to save water and to avoid bigger damage later\r |
| 8 | i from bursting water mains. "Called Lighthouse, the robot looks\r |
| 9 | i like a badminton birdie," reports Fast Company. "A soft\r |
| 10 | i 'skirt' on the device is covered with sensors. As it travels\r |
| 11 | i through pipes, propelled by the flowing water, suction tugs at\r |
| 12 | i the device when there's a leak, and it records the location,\r |
| 13 | i making a map of critical leaks to fix." From the report:\r |
| 14 | i \r |
| 15 | i > MIT doctoral student You Wu spent six years developing the\r |
| 16 | i design, building on research that earlier students began under\r |
| 17 | i a project sponsored by a university in Saudi Arabia, where\r |
| 18 | i most drinking water comes from expensive desalination plants\r |
| 19 | i and around a third of it is lost to leaks. It took three years\r |
| 20 | i before he had a working prototype. Then Wu got inspiration\r |
| 21 | i from an unexpected source: At a party with his partner, he\r |
| 22 | i accidentally stepped on her dress. She noticed immediately,\r |
| 23 | i unsurprisingly, and Wu realized that he could use a similar\r |
| 24 | i skirt-like design on a robot so that the robot could detect\r |
| 25 | i subtle tugs from the suction at each leak. Wu graduated from\r |
| 26 | i MIT in June, and is now launching the technology through a\r |
| 27 | i startup called [2]WatchTower Robotics . The company will soon\r |
| 28 | i begin pilots in Australia and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One\r |
| 29 | i challenge now, he says, is creating a guide so water companies\r |
| 30 | i can use the device on their own.\r |
| 31 | i \r |
| 32 | i \r |
| 33 | i \r |
| 34 | i [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90232363/this-leak-seeking-rob-\r |
| 35 | i ot-just-won-the-u-s-james-dyson-award\r |
| 36 | i \r |
| 37 | i [2] http://watchtowerrobotics.com/\r |
| 38 | i\r |