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It's 5 AM. Do You Know Where Your Robots Are? 92

Posted by michael from the lays-cable,-kills-roaches,-what-more-could-you-ask? dept.
aihacker writes "This New York Times article talks about a robot that lays fiber-optic lines in city sewers. What a brilliant way to bridge that "last mile"!" We've run a few stories about wiring (is that the right term for running fiber-optic cable?) cities for broadband, but the actual procedure is pretty interesting.
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It's 5 AM. Do You Know Where Your Robots Are? More

It's 5 AM. Do You Know Where Your Robots Are?

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  • The problem with cable is that it requires massive production of physical medium, so the idea would be either:
    • to re-use an existing "cable-based" connexion (which is basically what Alcatel aimed the DSL technology at - FYI, I was working with them on that project).
    • to use another kind of hertzian connexion in which case the impact on the cities infrastructure is far less important. I have also been working with an ISP whith whom we managed to set up a radio-based network in Arabia (with up to 40Mb/sec over 50 kilometers).
    The final possibility would be to use the electrical network to communicate : There are actually some possibility to transfer data along with electricity with very good (xMb/sec) transfer rate.
    it seems that it was not widely developped in France because of the government reluctancy to have a company (Electricite de France) concurrencing one another (France Telecom)...
    --

  • What kind of guidance are they giving these robots?


    Simple wires. It's not like they're going through miles of pipes with that in one session, but from one accessible point to the next. So it's doable.

  • I live in Omaha, despite being right dead in the center of the US, most telecomm bypasses us. It goes through Kansas City instead. It's not to far away, but still far enough to raise the cost of broadband alot. It's nice to see our medium size city finally getting some fiber installed to most of the buildings. There are alot of major companies in Omaha, this can do nothing but good in helping this city grow. I'm looking foward to it. Maybe I can find out more info on when they're doing it and check out one of the sewer funk covered bots ;)

    On an unrelated note, a former spawn company of Inacom is building a data center in Omaha. I'm looking forward to being able to drive 2 minutes (really, it's down the street from my apt) to install a new server, instead of hopping a flight 1000 miles to where our servers curently are. It's to bad one of the major datacenter companies didn't do this first, they're going to miss out on the market. I just hope the racks don't cost and arm and a leg.
  • What kind of guidance are they giving these robots? Radio/camera or pre-programmed plan?

    Wires... the trick is wires.

  • Link w/o registration. (Score:3)

    by shaka ( 13165 ) on Thursday March 08, 2001 @03:25AM (#376910)
    Article without registration [nytimes.com].

  • heh (Score:3)

    by JediTrainer ( 314273 ) on Thursday March 08, 2001 @03:34AM (#376911)
    a robot that lays fiber-optic lines in city sewers, is that the right term for running fiber-optic cable?

    Not on a first date. Unless the robot's a real machine (wink}

    Now when the ground's shaking, you won't be automatically thinking that it's the subway.
  • I have NOT read the article because of the whole req reg thing.

    Just log on as user slashdot2000 and password slashdot2000. Or create a GWBush@whitehouse.gov account (password:nosecandy). There really is no need to use any real information.



  • See this article [usatoday.com] in USA Today, dated last November. Contains a nice photo of the robot that will be actually doing the job.
  • Theyre running the wires through the storm water sewers, not sewage serwers. Everything in the storm water sewers is water/oil/gas/whatever off the road. You dont need to worry about the raw sewage touching your data.

    Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw,
  • The Hun is godlike. It's the only place I ever go for pr0n anymore.

    --
    Ellison: How are you gentlemen !! All your database are belong to us

  • There was a great article in mumblemuble about an extensive aerial mapping of New York that's just reached completion. Until recently, the civil engineering folks in NYC didn't even have a partiuclarly accurate map of the CITY, let alone the sewer system.

    The new map used aeriel photography coupled with a GIS-type CAD system to produce a super-accurate (within a couple of feet) map of NYC's streets, buildings, bridges, docks and so on.

    The kicker was that they wanted to make it publicly available, but the ubiqutous "law enforcement" (cue sinister music) didn't want it made public since they felt that it'd be an ideal way for "criminal elements" to pursue whatever it is "criminal elements do".

    Anyway, given the relative age of NYC and the way it grew, I'm surprised they know where ANYTHING goes.
  • Sewers were generally built a long time ago. They didn't exactly have GIS then.

    A major issue is that maybe you do have a plan of where the sewers are in relation to eachother but it is difficult to match up with what is on the street that may change, or indeed with other utilitiues diagrams.

    The other issue is dimensional instability of paper. Plans are just not very accurate over a period of time because the paper can become distorted.

  • Not to mention "network congestion" or "packet loss" :)

  • IP? (Score:2)

    by tmu ( 107089 )
    This gives IP a whole new meaning! :-)

    (can't take credit for that one--one of our sys admins at work came up with it when we were discussing Citynet, who are laying fiber in Albuquerque right now).
  • "I'm not positive about this, but I seem to remember reading about a new type of fibre that doesn't have holes in the side to let contaminants in. This is the sort they'll probably use."

    Yeah, probably.

    Also, on page 2 it notes that they place the fiber in steel conduits at the top of the sewer pipe "...well above the water's usual flow."

    Although they didn't specifically mention if the conduits were stainless steel, they probably decided not to use the type of steel that dissolves when exposed to moisture.

  • "
    a robot that lays fiber-optic lines in city sewers. [...] a few stories about wiring (is that the right term for running fiber-optic cable?)
    "

    The correct term is obviously "laying cable", which is why it involves sewers.

    FP.
    (is that just an English slang term?)
    --
  • Building/Housing associations in Helsinki have been doing this for a few years now. Basically everyone who wants it gets 10Mb/s ethernet to their flat, and it's switched in the basement onto fibre optics straight to the ISP.
    The waiting lists for these flats (they're new flats) are 18 months long.
    I hear that housing development companies in Stockholm (Sweden) have the same attitude as well.

    FatPhil.
    --
  • Mr. Berger, a telecommunications lawyer, was serving his second term on the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. "I was looking up at the water, washing the shampoo out of my hair, and said: `Oh, my gosh! I'm a water and sewer commissioner -- it's the one infrastructure that goes everywhere.' "

    Either that or a latent memory of the 3 Stooges episode where our boys are plumbers. Turn on the lights and the chandelier turns into a sprinkler system.

  • So who gives a shit if a rat takes a byte out of a cable? Sorry, bad joke...
  • I'm not sure shit and data share the same kind of transport media ;-)

    I don't know. Seems like a fitting way to send certain data [goatse.cx] if you ask me.

    Don't click on the link...

    See, I told you not to do it.
    _____________

  • He said for a few weeks he along with transit workers would begin late at night, early in the morning, and go step by step through the tunnels. I recall him saying it was a pain staking process since it carefully had to be set as to avoid any remote thought of all kinds of problems, kinks, high electrical interference etc.

    The part of fiber optic cabling used for carrying information is completely dielectric, and thus impervious to electrical interference. Fiber is often used in power plants when normal wiring would do for that very reason.
    --
  • but ive been dropping fiber into the sewer for years. about an hour after each meal. "colon-blow, all the flavor, with 80x's the fiber" "...mom, i just shit a rope"
  • City Net is not installing these cables in pipes to every home. The go to larger buildings, and commercial/industrial areas. The point isn't to get broadband for the home user, we (I live in Omaha, one of the cities this is going into) already have a broad availability of cable modems and dsl, which is good for the home user, but limited.

    Omaha is layed out like a grid, a few stretches of fiber down the main streets, and you'll be within a few hundred feet of a fiber line. Closer if the building is downtown or in west omaha I asume, where most of the commercial buildings are.

    With fiber, a company can get REALLY fast connections. Something that's not possible with other mediums. Somebody like mutual of omaha could link a few of their buildings together for a fraction of the cost of having the telco provide them fiber.

    As for radio, a company is providing radio based internet access using stations on top of grain silos in Iowa and Nebraska. It's won't really be in Omaha, but it'll be cool to see some of these rural towns get cheap broadband. I wish we had something like this in rural ohio where I'm originally from. Line of site is a bit of a problem there...

  • How about running cables by pet ferret [philly.com]? Costs only a few treats.

    I could contract my three out to some IT companies and make a bundle.

  • When building the trunk networks (at least in the UK), most of the telcos have had close links with an existing utility, so their fibre backbones run along the railway, electricity grid, etc. When they install fibre-based SDH they do it alongside the existing (obsolete) copper-based PDH equipment, which also saves them a fortune. It makes sense to do the same thing with the access network (local loop) too.

    The problem over here is that the broadband rollout has only just started, it's not going very fast and it's unlikely to be nationwide for several years. And it's mostly being done using xDSL technology, to avoid having to lay any new infrastructure. Now xDSL is the least future-proof technology I have ever seen, and most of the telcos will admit this. Sure, they'll eventually lay fibre all the way to the curbside, and maybe into the home, but they insist on using the DSL stopgap solution.

    I doubt very much that they will be using robots to do anything over here - it is still a notoriously lo-tec industry, whatever they try and tell you. :)

    They had suggested using the existing electricity distribution system (actually transmitting over the same copper which carries the mains voltage), but they hit a snag - lamp-posts!! Because the best frequencies to use on copper (in terms of attenuation) just happen to co-incide with AM radio, and lamp-posts act as a big antenna... so all local AM radio would be screwed up. (Not that anyone would notice ;-))
  • When I move, they wont need to rewire my house for DSL, I'm moving right next to one of the switching stations and will plug my CAT-5 cable directly into their system!

    I know of an ISP in Kansas City that did this, their building was right next to one of the main telco switches. It was rather nice, because when the telco screwed up, they could just go pound on the entrance to the building and yell at somebody in person.

    Back on topic of this reply, broadband will always be a consideration for my housing, after having a cable modem I can never go back. I'd probobly have nightmares or something. (cringe)

  • The term is 'blowing fibre' (Score:3)

    by Bazzargh ( 39195 ) on Thursday March 08, 2001 @02:01AM (#376932)
    At least in the UK, the phrase used in the industry is 'blowing fibre' - since compressed air is used to move the cable through the ducts.

    Keeping up with everybody elses poor taste jokes: I reckon there's plenty of folk blowing fibre into the sewers already...

    Anyway what I'd like to know is, what do they do about the rats? Rats are a major problem for cables, they have a taste for indigestible plastic. I can't remember the figures but in a large chunk of maintenance was because of rats chewing through cables. And if theres one thing I'd expect to find in sewers, its rats. Though seeing as its New York, maybe the alligators have eaten them all....

    -Baz

  • poor performance (Score:5)

    by oingoboingo ( 179159 ) on Thursday March 08, 2001 @02:02AM (#376933)
    talks about a robot that lays fiber-optic lines in city sewers.

    well this would certainly give new meaning to the oft muttered phrase "the network is performing like shit today"...

  • Often guidance equipment is used above ground where the robot works underground. There are moles used in Australia to dig there way through dirt, under roads, around existing pipes and user quite sophisticated radar and sonics. Every now and then though, the little buggers get themselves trapped and have to be dug out. In the sewers I imagine it would be easier, just like the sewer pipe clears, they just get pushed through the pipe.
  • Whoops: '...in < the major telco I used to work for > a large chunk...' dammit I must use preview more.
  • Somebody has to get the robot into the manholes, to build in the "slack boxes" that allow the connections from the fiber-optic network into buildings

    Slackboxen? Cool!
    Sean

  • The article said that in the process of laying the fiber, the city gets a map of the sewers... Maybe this is a bit obtuse, but shouldn't the city already have a map from installing the sewers in the first place?

    What's the deal? Is there some sort of rogue group of sewer builders secretly installing new runoff drains or something?

    That's just wacky.

  • IT IS 5:00 AM, AND YOUR ROBOTS ARE JUST FINE. NOW GO TO BED ALREADY. [hhttp]
  • and will plug my CAT-5 cable directly into their system!
    We're talking about a sewer here--I think you should use SCAT-5...

    If you love God, burn a church!

  • This is too funny! (Score:3)

    by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Thursday March 08, 2001 @04:25AM (#376940)
    Verizon won't even let their minimum-wage techs venture into the NYC sewers, yet CityNet, a new company, is sending a million-dollar robot to lay fiber-optic lines!

    Who else finds this funny?

  • The new map used aeriel photography

    When did Disney get involved? :)

    The kicker was that they wanted to make it publicly available, but the ubiqutous "law enforcement" (cue sinister music) didn't want it made public since they felt that it'd be an ideal way for "criminal elements" to pursue whatever it is "criminal elements do".

    Well, that makes sense. Everyone knows those criminal elements would start surveying land and other sorts of mischief if they had access to such precision tools as maps.

    "Hey, Rocco, let's hit that warehouse tonight." "That's not a warehouse, it's a pond." "Damn 5-meter resolution!"

    -Legion

  • The fiber is all put on the top of the sewer (the steel rings snap into place and have brackets for steel conduit above and the fiber goes in that).

  • stopping the rats (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Rats are a big problem, and that's why many outdoor cables are armored. They've got a layer of polyethylene on the outside, then a layer of steel armor, then another layer of polyethylene, then fiber in the middle. If you read the PDF file here [corningcablesystems.com], you'll get a drawing.
  • It's manually guided. Uses a ~3cm dia. umbilical with video and miscellaneous telemetry feeds.

    A funny but I almost missed in the article: The drivers of the poopmobile use the remote arm to kill roaches when they're bored. That would be fun as heck.


    Brant
  • Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo, Michaelangelo

    Only problem is child labor laws for hazardous work -- remember these are TEENAGERS we're talking about!...


    ---------------------------------------------
  • Couldn't this be effectively counter-measured by putting in random error in the public maps?

    I mean, it worked so well with the GPS....

    - Steeltoe
  • The french PTT have been doing precisely that for the last 100 years or so.

    And they don't need robots to do that.

    Actually, a joint venture with the french railroads and the water company will compete with the PTT: they use railroad right-of-ways to lay cable between cities, they put the switches in train stations, and go the last kilometer though the sewers (also) used by the water company.

    --

  • In 5th grade or so, I went on a field trip to a sewage plant... I learned of some of teh stuff that comes through, and forgot most of the rest of the stuff. But, occasionally they get boards (from construction), chemicals, tree branches, etc... If the fiber optic cables are run in the sewers, they have a good chance, imo, of getting severed. And being in the sewers, you'd probly have to go in at 2 man holes, cut the piece off, and re-run the cable through there.. could get a lot more expensive than maybe just putting a connector there in the middle if it was severed. (I assume using robots because I assume sewers can't fit a human very well.)

    overall, it'd probly cause more trouble than it's worth.

    -DrkShadow
  • "all kinds of problems, kinks, high electrical interference etc." (emphasis added).

    Electrical interference? With a purely optical transmission medium?

    Asikaa

  • Why not send deepwater ocean cables through water pipes.
  • If you're really into this, the generic term is "no-dig" technology, and there's a trade association (The International Society for Trenchless Technology [istt.com]) and a trade show (No-Dig 2001, in Prague).

    There's a whole range of technologies for putting stuff into the ground without disturbing the surface. The two main categories are schemes for re-using existing underground assets, and microtunneling. Both tend to involve some degree of teleoperation.

    Kerr Construction [kerrconstruction.com] has a good site on microtunneling.

  • So what happens when half time of the superbowl comes and everyone flushes their toilets? Does the Internet connection for half the city go out becasue of the high volume of sewage being pumped through the pipes? And Can you imagine the pain in the ass these would be for maintenance crews? I can just imagine the looks on some poor maintenance person as he crawls through sewage to fix a fiber line.

  • New York - are you kidding? The robots had better be pretty well-armed to deal with the Alligators in the Sewers [urbanlegends.com]. On the other hand, simply using alligators might do the job. Or alligator-shaped robots.
  • Re-read the article. Rings are laid inside the sewer pipe that have conduit clamps at the top. Steel conduit is then clamped to the rings so the conduit is running along the roof of the sewer pipe. Once the conduit is in place, pull wires are blown through the conduit, then used to pull the fiber through. You seriously thought they were running a loose fiber line throught a live sewer pipe??
  • That's not data that travels to my speakers?

    You mean you 'cable' a digital line and 'wire' and analog one? I get it....

    MediaOne ran a coax cable to my living room. I'm glad I told the technician I ordered Digital Cable, because he might not have know whether to 'wire' it or 'cable' it. What if he did the wrong one???

    Do you 'cable' a DC power line? It is, technically, digtial.

    If you want to dicuss semantics and etymology, don't try to invent your own rules.

  • Re:Do you really want Fiber in the sewers? (Score:5)

    by rde ( 17364 ) on Thursday March 08, 2001 @01:12AM (#376957)
    So what happens when half time of the superbowl comes and everyone flushes their toilets?
    I'm not positive about this, but I seem to remember reading about a new type of fibre that doesn't have holes in the side to let contaminants in. This is the sort they'll probably use.

    Of course, it'll need to be specific. If they design it to filter shit, then thousands - nay, millions - of AOLusers will suddenly find their emails bouncing (sorry; BOUNCING).
  • These cables aren't 'blown', they're layed with a robot who inserts a ring inside the pipe, and then attaches the small metal pipe that the fiber goes in.

    The small pipe is used to prevent things like rats, even though there aren't many in these kind of smaller pipes they use, and corosion.

    After all that is layed, then the fiber is 'blown' through the small pipes. (I believe, they may just do it all at once)

    There's alot of information on their website.

  • Rigging Crew/ (Score:5)

    by Colvin Burgess ( 146596 ) on Thursday March 08, 2001 @02:15AM (#376959) Homepage
    I can picture it now. Big company execs hiring head hunters to find the perfect sewer broadband cable layers. Resumes are submitted:

    Perfect Team...

    Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo, Michaelangelo

    They work well in a sewer environment. Salary is pepperoni pizza. Very skilled with tools and have unique techniques to move effectively throughout the sewers. Only draw back is that appear only to only lay April.

    Project Manager Splinter, gifted with experience and wisdom, this wily guy co-ordinates this freak team.

  • It has to be said... (Score:3)

    by TheOutlawTorn ( 192318 ) on Thursday March 08, 2001 @01:15AM (#376960)
    This gives a whole new perspective to the term "laying pipe".

    ducking thrown tomatos
  • I hope those robots can perform any maintenance to those fibers. Otherwise I'd hate to be the guy that has to go down there and fix them.

  • This isn't new ... (Score:5)

    by charlie ( 1328 ) <charlie@NoSpAm.antipope.org> on Thursday March 08, 2001 @02:17AM (#376962) Homepage Journal
    Back in 1982, the British government privatised the telephone system (as British Telecom) and began phasing out their monopoly. A competing company -- Mercury Telecom -- decided to get into the game by providing high bandwidth trunk connections through London. Their problem was that BT owned all the main cable ducts and weren't going to cooperate willingly.

    However, someone at Mercury got smart. They remembered an ancient power distribution system: back in the late 1880's some factories ran on compressed air, pressurized to hundreds of PSI, and distributed through cast-iron pipes from central steam-powered compressor stations. Long since obsolete (shut down in the 1910's), the pipes were still in the ground!

    So Mercury engineers built small robot pigs and used them to lay fibre-optic cables right through the heart of the capital city without digging up any roads -- using the pipe network that time forgot.

    Now we hear about New York using the same system -- but of course, nobody remembers where it came from!

  • Ok, after reading the article and seeing that they ponderously crawl through the sewers to deploy robots to run fiber cables up through the bases of buildings, a somewhat obvious thought occured to me... Why don't they just flush the damn fibers down a toilet? figuratively speaking, of course, I mean why don't they just float the wire in the direction the pipes are running? They could set up at the sewer main for one of these buildings and deploy a rubber ball tied to an end of fiber. Then flood the system into the sewer. All they would need to do is retrieve the ball down in the larger sections of sewer, where one may walk upright at their leisure, in a hazmat suit. The only problem sounds like getting around a buildings slosh box, but I bet that task could be solved with a pump, a flashlight and a longish stick.

    :)Fudboy

  • Do You Know Where Your Robot Are?

    They are belong to us!

    -Ciaran

  • What kind of guidance are they giving these robots?

    If it's pulling fiber, why not hook the end of the fiber up for purposes of control (though I would guess it's actually pulling a 'pull string'.

    I knew of a guy that used radio controlled toy tanks to pull wire in suspended ceilings and in subfloors. Another guy I heard about was using a crossbow with a fishing reel attached to lay deploy a pull string. He thought it worked great until he shot straight through some AC ducts.

    carlos

  • Considering that we're talking about pulling fiber in sewers, it seems that this rat: Rattie [newmedianews.com] would be a more appropriate method. However, this story is from '97, and considering the average life span of a rodent, Rattie may be pushing up daisies now.

  • Damnit, if I had been up earlier, I would have posted this myself. And I don't even have any mod points to mod it up. So I'll just reply and say kudos.

    Do you have stairs in your house?
  • The article mentioned they were working in a 12 inch pipe.

    Navigating in a pipe sloped downhill is fairly easy.
  • of all things, a 'blow job'.

    The used to lay the conduit, cap up both ends, then send a burst of air through the conduit with an attachment at the front of the fiber. This would push the fiber through the conduit and it would stop when it hit the other end.

    No shit, that's what they called in, at least in Colorado, in 1994/1995.

    Aren't you glad you know that now!?
  • Who needs WLAN card anymore? I want a toilet seat that has RJ45 connector in it!
  • Here in DC, they're using these robots to lay down the fibre. It's a much nice way of doing things, esp in the nation's 2nd largest congested place.

    It lessens the need to rip up the roads and cause huge problems for traffic, as if DC didn't already have enough problems with traffic as it is. The little robots has a camera on it and a little arm which just sets up the wiring and has another tool which attaches it to the sewer pipe.

    it's really cool, kinda similar to how some cable companies like Cox is laying down, or up, fibre. They just place a little utility on the wire with the fibre on the cable lines we see hanging above then it binds it to the line. Kinda cool thing.

    I'm hoping to get one of those robots so I dont have to drill holes to put in more cables in my house ^__^

    Man I should have written the article a couple weeks ago when I saw them doing it but couldn't find it anywhere.

  • When I was living in college apartments before they started wiring for Ethernet, we came up with serious plans to flush Cat 5 down the toilet to get a connection to the far side of the apartment complex. We figure, flush a sting down one toilet and the cable down the other, find a freshman to go in to the sewer and tie the ends together and pull it up on the other side. You'd have the minor inconvience of a small leak in the toilet seal but it would have been well worth it to share a t1 back in those days! "Please don't piss on the Cat 5."
  • Hmm.. i'd have moderated this "Informative" instead of "Funny". Ferrets are actually used to pull cables at sites like rock-concerts... who needs robots? Ferrets rule!
  • It seems to me that using molemen to lay fiber optic cable would be cheaper than using robots.. they know the sewers better than any robot.

    Can you imagine what the molemen must think as a robot passes them by at 5am?

    -gerbik
  • Why not use the stormwater drain network instead of the the sewers? Cleaner, and altogether much better
  • I wonder who thought this up? I have NOT read the article because of the whole req reg thing. It seems to me that it makes sense to run it through sewers. Nothing really happens down there and so there shouldnt be a problem with anyone messing with them.

    Now all they need is to do it everywhere, especially right next to my house, and then things would be good. I have friends that live in new gated communities with connection speeds about as fast as the T1 at my work which really sucks becuase they dont know crap about the potential they have.

    When I move, they wont need to rewire my house for DSL, I'm moving right next to one of the switching stations and will plug my CAT-5 cable directly into their system!

    Lord Arathres
  • Well, they were teenagers back in the 80's. I'm sure they're old enough to work now.
  • Well I sure wish that they were helping me write a really boring essay on why Antigone is a good feminist. *shiver*
  • The NYT article likens the robot to a cross between a dachshund and a Hoover. Fitting, no?

    Out of sheer morbid curiosity, I fed "dachshund" to Babelfish, asking for German to English translation, and got:

    dogdog dog

    Fitting, no?

    --
  • Pecunia non olet (money doesn't stink).

    Well, at least the next time you see your connection speed drop after you flushed your toilet, you know what happend: more "traffic" down there.

  • I can just plug the cable straight into my java ring-piece [everything2.com]!

  • Because she didn't shave her armpits? Oh wait, that was from my high school essay on why so people think Antigone was from France. Sorry, can't help ya.


    Cheers,

  • Ok, how many of you network geeks out there took a look at the summary and (like me) the first thing that entered your mind was "Dirty fiber"?
  • lets try this again, it crashed netscape last time.

    What kind of guidance are they giving these robots? Radio/camera or pre-programmed plan? If it is radio, thats often a lot of rock and metal to go through, and radio isn't too fond of that. If it's pre-programmed, what contingencies does the program allow, such as a dead rat or a bird nest in the way?

    It would be nice if they could do this in San Jose as well, but most of Silicon Valley used lots of pipes instead of large tunnels for their sewer system, (we came later so we learned from the mistakes in sewer design made in the east coast and europe, looks like we were a little short sighted) so I don't think they'd be able to put the fiber down there.
  • I'm not sure shit and data share the same kind of transport media ;-)

    But regarding maintenance: They have robots for that, too. Actually, I think the same robot that lays the fiber can also cut it and remove it from the pipe, and then lay a new one. Maintenance isn't worse than laying the fiber in the first place, which isn't a lot of fun. But it's a very clever idea and creates a lot less problems than digging through half the city ...

    But it's not exactly a very new thing, I've seen documentaries on this over here in Europe at least a year ago.
  • Maybe slashdot should not only give you the option of choosing your timezone, but also adjust it's headers to it, so it would read (in my case): It's 11:00 AM, Do you know where your robots are?.

    Then again, maybe not.


  • I had an ex co-worker who laid down Fiber for the New York Stock Exchange, and I remember him telling me the steps they took to do this.

    According to him the New York City Transit Authority was paid a hefty amount of money to blow dark fiber through its train tunnels.

    He said for a few weeks he along with transit workers would begin late at night, early in the morning, and go step by step through the tunnels. I recall him saying it was a pain staking process since it carefully had to be set as to avoid any remote thought of all kinds of problems, kinks, high electrical interference etc.

    Blowing fiber through the sewer sounds like a neat idea, but I wonder how exactly is it set as to avoid any acts of nature such as, chemical compounds of all sorts of crap in the sewer which can affect it. (hint acids built up from excrement)

    Its an extremely expensive task, and I wouldn't want to be the one down below doing it.

    CIA bullies a Jew [antioffline.com]
  • FWIW it's cabling not wiring. You wire speakers or electrical outlets, but you cable a data path.
  • So now It'll be more than someone's gnutella client that takes a crap on my network.
    --
    "You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet
    might be running loose in your pants."
  • The way the entertainment industry casts actors and actresses, I suspect "teenager" is just a euphemism for "hasn't hit thirty yet".

    From what I've seen of the porn industry, it isn't even THAT restrictive (g)...

    ---------------------------------------------
  • Read the article. It's in the New York Times, but the deployment is in Albuquerque.

    Besides, it sounds like Verizon cares about their employess then! :)
  • Here's another article on the 'last mile problem'.
    About a company called Tearbeam. Not very technical. Might want to check out the company website.
    http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/02/27/tera be am/index.html
  • And the Russians refused to even provide maps on the same "national insecurity" basis. I'm sure there were rudimentary road maps, but generally IIRC maps were considered state secrets, especially larger maps or detailed maps of rural areas.
  • I heard that same robot was also caught stealing old peoples' medicine.

    --
  • I can see it now: Bright yellow signs in public restrooms:
    "WARNING:Fiber Optic Cable Below"
    Call Before you Flush
    1(800)GOT-TO-GO

  • I am the pusher robot (Score:5)

    by Trepidity ( 597 ) <delirium-slashdot@@@hackish...org> on Thursday March 08, 2001 @01:36AM (#376996)
    It's 5 AM. Do You Know Where Your Robot Are?


    Yes. They are here to protect you. Please stand by the stairs so they can protect you. From the terrible secret of space.

  • The story was posted at 4:00 am according to the post time, not 5:00 am.

    I dont know what time zone your in, but in mine its definatly not 5:00 am yet

    Wait a sec, what the hell am i doing up this late anyway?? Im going to bed.

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