Robots to Crawl Under the City

Johan Louwers writes "Robots will crawl tubes in a short while to investigate power cables running in the tubes to make sure they are still undamaged or in need for a repair. The Robotic Cable Inspection System is developed by Alexander Mamishev, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington. Making use of infrared thermal analysis and acoustic partial discharge analysis, the robot will be checking mile after mile of cable while crawling his way in the tubes."

The Cousins of the Sewer Robots

[MightyMait]

Here in Santa Cruz, we're currently using robots to inspect our sewers. My buddy made a TV show (on Community TV--like Public Access) of the raw footage from the sewer robot set to soothing music. Must-see TV!!

Re:Will this work in the real world?

[jcurran]

I've seen underground power cables in the Boston area, and at least in the ones I saw, there was no tray, just lots of serious support ironwork. Additionallly, there was no nice clean lit walkway on the side as in the video. The problem that I see is that the places that its hardest to visually inspect are just the circumstances that these robots would be handiest, and that's exactly the circumstances that they'll have the most problems navigating.