When it comes to the supply of fresh water around the world, it's estimated that roughly 20 percent of that fresh water is lost because of leaks within the water distribution systems.
In an effort to address the issue, researchers at MIT have recently developed a new badminton-shaped robot that is able to inspect water and gas pipes and locate leaks within distribution systems.
MIT researchers recently conducted trials with their new robot design in Saudi Arabia and the robot completed every trial successfully; 14 trials in total.
It's alleged that Saudi Arabia sees a loss of about a third of its water supply due to leaks in the system; fueling their interest to sponsor such tests to be conducted. There are many who are interested in finding a solution to this problem.
The researchers at MIT developed a robot that resembles a badminton birdie (see image above) and the robot is able to travel through water distribution systems or gas pipes etc, looking for small leaks. The robot is able to find the leaks by detecting subtle pressures via the sensor on the edge of its skirt-like design.
Improving On Current Methods..
The new design was allegedly able to efficiently detect a leak that was roughly one-tenth the size of the sort of leak that current systems are efficiently able to detect nowadays.
They aren't finished with their tests yet either, now that they have completed trials in Saudi Arabia they will be looking to carry out trials in Monterrey, Mexico. Following Mexico, it's likely that they will test the robot with pipes in Boston.
When it comes to a loss of fresh water supply thanks to problematic pipes, it's an issue that many countries are struggling to deal with.
Saudi Arabia allegedly sees a third of their supply lost, Mexico sees about 40 percent of their supply lost, the UK sees about 20 percent of their supply lost, and in the US there are billions of gallons of treated drinking water that are wasted thanks to problems with leaky pipes and degrading systems.
There are other entrepreneurs out there looking to come up with a solution to this problem as well.
Some firms are looking at drones to help them address the issue, but they've been experimenting with flying the drones over a certain area of a town or community and then collecting data from hundreds of gauges via the drone.
Israel is said to be one of the leading countries in this area of development at the moment, striving to find creative solutions to reduce water loss.
Industry experts say that this is one of the biggest problems facing the world today, there is a tremendous amount of waste going on that might be preventable if the right solution can be found. But upgrading the infrastructure in order to address the problem isn't going to be any cheap endeavor.
Pics:
MIT
Pixabay
Sources:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/24/pipeguard-pipe-robot-finds-water-line-leaks/
https://www.pcmag.com/news/355142/this-little-robot-finds-leaks-in-water-gas-pipes
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/water-torture-3300000000-litres-are-lost-every-single-day-through-leakage-2034999.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-water-israel-leaks-idUSTRE5A303X20091104
http://www.npr.org/2014/10/29/359875321/as-infrastructure-crumbles-trillions-of-gallons-of-water-lost
http://www.seametrics.com/blog/water-infrastructure/
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Very innovative. The statistic of water loss is even higher in others climes and this would drastically reduce it. Great post! Upvoted & resteemed!
That's pretty cool technology my friend, thanks for sharing.
It's really amazing method !! Thanks for sharing with us :(@doitvoluntarily!!
It is hard to check leaks in pipes and it will probably be a better alternative than using a radioactive tracer.
Really amazing what intuitive technology is being created making repairs safer and more efficient.
Let's see if this becomes used conventionally everywhere.
Great Post @doitvoluntarily
Wow amazing. This kind of robot could really save people lot of money and potentially save lives where water is scarce. Great post, upvoted!
Your articles and videos are very interesting, this is a technology and innovative works that produce very good clean water.
This are the kind of info we need on steemit. Nice post. Thsnk for sharing
Very innovative and also a good information . Maybe with this we can help people along the globe , maybe we can help each other . Also the informations you provide are clean and easy to read + they are accurate . Followed you as well and I hope I will more quality posts like this one . Cheers @background58
Wow amazing.Very innovative.Thanks for sharing with us
Awesome tech! Taking into account how much water we as humans are wasting every day.
nice post sir, please we need more of this post
Its not the size do much as the accuracy. I would assume 20% of the leaks make up for 80% of your loss so as long as it can accuratley find your big leaks it will really jelp aleviate the issues.
Great information. Well done in terms of layout, the flow of ideas and the documentation. I especially like the way you included the source material.
It's a wonder how there are so many leaks in our water pipes. I guess water just wants to be free.
I recently watched a Pacific Rim UCSF student broadcast, the students have created nanobots that can enter the bloodstream and wrap around our DNA to rebuild or fight off viruses. I wish I could remember or find the link to share. It was real awesome to watch.
A brilliant invention. With water likely to become the next gold in the future this will be a valuable robot to have.
very good post!!! win a upvote!!! ;)