Collecting the necessary data to maintain water pipelines and sewers is often time-consuming and expensive. Thanks to a robot and the University of Texas at Arlington, a more cost effective and time efficient solution is now revolutionizing the monitoring of the city’s sewer pipes. The floating robot is equipped with a high-definition video camera, a laser to scan the concrete pipe above the water line, and sonar to scan below. It will be pulled through pipes on a cable, and will reach 48 miles of the city’s largest, most critical concrete pipes. The cost of the robot and hiring university data analysts is less than half the cost of hiring a complete service to run a robot and interpret the data. Ultimately, the data will help Arlington Water Utilities identify which pipes need replacement before a major break.
Gamechanger added in 2016.
