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299a08f3 NR |
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 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: MIT\r | |
14 | i doctoral student You Wu spent six years developing the design,\r | |
15 | i building on research that earlier students began under a\r | |
16 | i project sponsored by a university in Saudi Arabia, where most\r | |
17 | i drinking water comes from expensive desalination plants and\r | |
18 | i around a third of it is lost to leaks. It took three years\r | |
19 | i before he had a working prototype. Then Wu got inspiration\r | |
20 | i from an unexpected source: At a party with his partner, he\r | |
21 | i accidentally stepped on her dress. She noticed immediately,\r | |
22 | i unsurprisingly, and Wu realized that he could use a similar\r | |
23 | i skirt-like design on a robot so that the robot could detect\r | |
24 | i subtle tugs from the suction at each leak. Wu graduated from\r | |
25 | i MIT in June, and is now launching the technology through a\r | |
26 | i startup called WatchTower Robotics. The company will soon\r | |
27 | i begin pilots in Australia and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One\r | |
28 | i challenge now, he says, is creating a guide so water companies\r | |
29 | i can use the device on their own.\r | |
30 | i\r |