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+0MIT Graduate Creates Robot That Swims Through Pipes To Find Out If They're Leaking (fastcompany.com) null/SLASHDOT/0102640424 70\r
+i Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:30PM (BeauHD)\r
+i from the leak-detecting dept.\r
+i\r
+i A 28-year-old MIT graduate named You Wu spent six years\r
+i developing a low-cost robot designed to find leaks in pipes\r
+i early, both to save water and to avoid bigger damage later\r
+i from bursting water mains. "Called Lighthouse, the robot looks\r
+i like a badminton birdie," reports Fast Company. "A soft\r
+i 'skirt' on the device is covered with sensors. As it travels\r
+i through pipes, propelled by the flowing water, suction tugs at\r
+i the device when there's a leak, and it records the location,\r
+i making a map of critical leaks to fix." From the report: MIT\r
+i doctoral student You Wu spent six years developing the design,\r
+i building on research that earlier students began under a\r
+i project sponsored by a university in Saudi Arabia, where most\r
+i drinking water comes from expensive desalination plants and\r
+i around a third of it is lost to leaks. It took three years\r
+i before he had a working prototype. Then Wu got inspiration\r
+i from an unexpected source: At a party with his partner, he\r
+i accidentally stepped on her dress. She noticed immediately,\r
+i unsurprisingly, and Wu realized that he could use a similar\r
+i skirt-like design on a robot so that the robot could detect\r
+i subtle tugs from the suction at each leak. Wu graduated from\r
+i MIT in June, and is now launching the technology through a\r
+i startup called WatchTower Robotics. The company will soon\r
+i begin pilots in Australia and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One\r
+i challenge now, he says, is creating a guide so water companies\r
+i can use the device on their own.\r
+i\r
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