In the global water distribution system, leakage has always been a difficult problem. According to rough statistics, about 20% of the loss in the water distribution system is caused by water leakage, and the leakage of pipes will also cause damage to the related infrastructure construction. The problem is difficult to solve because the water distribution system is complex and huge. Today, the precise leak detection system is still expensive and slow. Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT college has developed a low-cost simple robot device that can be quickly refined. It is found that the leakage points of the specified water distribution system can be detected even though tiny flaws can be detected and repaired before filling the disastrous results.   

" style="box-sizing: border-box">Industrial pipeline robot The device is led by Professor KamalYoucef-Toumi of MIT for nine years, and will be demonstrated at the IROS conference of the IEEE/RSJ intelligent robot and system international conference in September next year. The outer part of the shell is basically made of rubber. The first half is like a soft robot on the upper part of the beverage bottle. The latter part is a "skirt like" inductor. After entering the water distribution system, the robot device can move passively, record its position parameters and the various vibration and pressure in real time, and analyze the specific location of the leakage through the algorithm. In a Saudi Arabian test, Professor KamalYoucef-Toumi found a leak hole of one gallon per minute and found other tiny leak points that the other means could detect less than 1/10 of the average leak hole.   

The team is now planning to create a more flexible and scalable version of the robot that can adaptively detect leakage in different calibre pipes.