Around three billion litres of water are lost through leaks across hundreds of thousands of miles of water pipe in England and Wales daily, says water industry economic regulator Ofwat.

Engineers have now developed miniature robots to patrol the pipe network, check for faults and prevent leaks.

They say maintaining the network will be "impossible" without robotics.

Water industry body Water UK told BBC News that companies were already "investing billions" in leakage.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Sariel007:

Around three billion litres of water are lost through leaks across hundreds of thousands of miles of water pipe in England and Wales daily, says water industry economic regulator Ofwat.

Engineers have now developed miniature robots to patrol the pipe network, check for faults and prevent leaks.

They say maintaining the network will be "impossible" without robotics.

Water industry body Water UK told BBC News that companies were already "investing billions" in leakage.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/100lt82/water_pipe_robots_could_stop_billions_of_litres/j2ibden/

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This is so neat!

I was wondering why the robots didn't have regular ol' wheels.. one benefit that's coming to mind is that the robot can turn just by adjusting the speed of the spin.

The first thing that came to mind were the Mouser robots from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

First thing that came to my mind was robotic bongs.

That's the title from the website...

Billions of liters…. Daily?!

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It’s about 24% of the supply. It’s insane

The pipe shown in the video is soil pipe (waste water), which across the network has a mix of old (clay) and new (plastics). There are loads of cracks, deformations, connection ridges, sludge/scale/shit build ups that these wheels would find it easier to climb compared to regular wheels.

Though, I could be completely wrong. Just my initial thoughts.

We do this all the time now with what's basically a GoPro strapped to an RC car for about 10% of the price. You don't even need wifi for location because you can count the rotations or just measure the string you tied to the end.

These robots don't actually stop leaks. They just spot them. The real trick is getting the pipe repaired which comes at significant expense and inconvenience to everyone in the area.

You can slickline the pipe, but more cost for less infrastructure. But even then it still reduces the pipe's diameter, so you can only do that so many times before you need to whole ass replace the pipe.

It goes into the ground that's where we get it from

I work for a water district and review footage of sewer mains. Without getting into much detail, as long as the camera isn’t violently shaky this kind of wheel would be great. Sometimes sewer pipes become offset at joints and because fixing it is expensive as long as shit can still flow it’s ignored. The standard little rover can get over most offsets but debris like a random brick that some how gets in stops it in its tracks. If this new thing can get around obstacles that along would be really good. Also I’ve never seen a gator in the sewer but I’ve seen rats and rat snakes. Coworker saw a raccoon.

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A few years back the area my parents live experienced a drought with no rain for 6 weeks or so. Almost all their grass died, but they noticed some mysteriously green areas in their yard and a small amount of water pooling and they thought their septic tank was leaking.

It turns out the water main that basically ran underneath their property and served the whole neighborhood was leaking. I don’t remember the exact figure, but it was leaking a staggering amount of water - something like 5 or 10 gallons per minute, every minute, all day, every day. Thankfully they live at the top of a large hill, so the water was pulled away from the house and property by gravity and had plenty of ground to seep into.

But without that drought this may have continued for years and years before it was noticed.

Well if clean water is leaking into the ground the problem is we're spending money to clean that water and effectively lighting that money on fire.

And if it's billions of poopwater litres going into the ground... That is really not so great.

You don't know anything about the water cycle, do you?

For the morons downvoting me. Yes, the idiot I responded to is technically correct but any water dumped into the ground isn't going to be used or accessible as drinking, bath, gardening, etc water for a very very long time. It takes eons for water to settle in the aquifers where we get our water.

For what it is worth natural gas pipelining has been doing a similar thing for decades. They call it pigging. It’s not autonomous and does require human intervention but the tech is really cool.

Yes, in a reddit post from one week prior in the same subreddit. OP is reposting. If you would care to examine the hyperlink, you would notice the above commenter is pointing out the original post that traffic should be directed to and not the bbc article. Basic technical literacy, like being able to distinguish between a reddit link and the content it links to is an essential skill.

Just need to start reaming those pipes and putting in epoxy. That would be repeatable endlessly.

Actually it IS great. Poop is a good fertilizer.

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That’s like a Jetski, right?

And the fact it tastes great is an added bonus

You don't want to be spreading faeces around though, and even on fields you shouldn't spread too much else it gets into waterways, leading to algal blooms which then kill animal life.

A good way to get around town is what it is.

Sorry to be the stop-having-fun-guy but I'm a utility inspector.

We already have these. Pipe snakes and camera rovers that are typically tethered. Manhole to manhole isn't enough distance to really warrant a wireless solution. Especially when you may have to yank it back out when it gets stuck.

They don't really need to be miniaturized more than they are. The only real bottleneck (that puns was for me) is the labor cost. You don't really eliminate that with a more high tech solution. You're really just making IT guys crawl under manholes instead.

The best way to get ahead of this problem is better code enforcement ans spending money on maintenance that has largely been ignored. However, like with all government spending on infrastructure that doesn't get anyone re-elected.

The website they're reposting from...

I am wondering how easy is it to spot cracks in pipes on camera images from the inside ? If there is a cm wide gap I suppose it is visible, but small cracks ? Especially if there is dirt in the pipe ?

Where I live, it’s considered that over 20% is too much, under that is ok. And goung under 10% is too costly to search and repair.

Yeah just spot fix the cracks. Clear the debris. done

Geez. Do you know the diameter of the main? Just curious. Trying to visualize how big it is and how big a crack/break would be to leak that much water.

PIG - Pipeline Inspection Gauge

In waterpipes it’s alao been done for decades, but in much lesser scale compared to storm or sewage pipes. Most of leaks on waterpipes are microleaks and you won’t find them with robots. And there is also no point of repairing them, because even if cost of one microleak is 100 euros in a year ( and that is already not so microleak), finding and repairing it can cost (depends on location) 3000 + euros and up tens thousands.

Take it a step further.

What if you discover a crack less than 1cm in width with this fancy robot or my GoPro on an RC car?

Are you really going to fix it? How? Is it worth it? Or would you just wait until the crack gets big enough that it would be easily visible on a camera anyway?

robots mentioned in a headline

"ThEy ArE GoNnA TAkE OvEr!"

Are you eating unwashed vegetables straight after pulling them from the dirt?

I do not. I remember it was an old main that I believe was made of metal. It was replaced entirely with a main of much smaller diameter made of an entirely different, modern material (I can't recall what, exactly). We were told the new main would perform as well as the old one, despite being smaller, and that seems to be the case as we noticed no difference in water pressure after it was installed.

We’ve had a water leak near us, on the main road, for over 3 years. They’ve made 2 previous attempts to fix it, which failed. When we had the cold snap just before Xmas it created a skating rink across the road so they actually came and tried again to fix it, which looks to have worked so far.

I can’t help but think that taking less than 3 years to fix a considerable leak would save a shit load of water and doesn’t require any fancy new technology to be invented.

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The new pipe was probably PVC

Pathogens too. That's why you must treat the wastewater before releasing it into the environment. You also want to change the N and P in the wastewater into more bio-available forms before using it as fertilizer

I do love stupid articles like this. They make it seem like it's something innovative yet it's been around for a long time already. And I especially agree with it needing to be tethered to get pulled. The wifi one get stuck in a pipe, you just leaving your $25000 camera down there? No, now you need to send people in just to recover it before it causes a back up

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That's really not that much water if you've ever worked around utilities. It's about the equivalent of a half inch copper line.

From a quick googling a residential sprinkler system uses between 12-30 gallons per minute. So about half of what it takes to run a sprinkler system

When you account for the amount of stimulants, medication, microplastics, antibiotics and hormone treatment (some fish population are turning female only due to contraceptive agents (from pill) present in urine found in waste water that ends up in waterways, fucking up the ecosystem...

No.

Human waste is definitely not what you want to use to fertilize the ground.

My water company deployed 7000 pressure and flow loggers across the network and a team of analysts working 24/7 monitoring it. They can much more easily see where volume is being lost and isolate leaks. Also used for bursts I believe.

However, I work in wastewater so my clean-water cousins in my business are my arch nemeses so they can suck-it and I hope they fail. (joke)

>Water UK responded saying that leakage was at "its lowest level since privatisation".

This statement is suspect as all hell. Why that word at the end?

Eww no. Dip it in stagnate pond water first.

Mutant sewer raccoons are the worst.

Wow. Then wouldn't the fixtures downstream (ie where the water ends up, faucets etc) notice a big drop in water pressure?

The farther you get from the source the lower the pressure will be. A home only really needs like 40psi to operate correctly and many times has 100+psi that needs to be reduced because of this.

Also a small leak is not going to noticeably drop water pressure in a 6" main

Damn I love how much this has blown up in the news recently, the company founded at leeds university was on the back of my brothers Phd recearch. I'm so happy for him!

Don't forget the turtles who knew ninjutsu and eats pizza!

Ain't that some shit!

Can’t wait for the robot in the pipes listening to you conspiracies

You know what else could help? If landlords would fucking keep their properties maintained and not put the fucking water heater in a closet outdoors.

Seriously how fucking stupid and/or big of a piece of shit does someone have to be to think that placement is a good idea? Countless corporate landlords do this worldwide.

No i dont need a water pipe robot, my anolog bong works just fine

A regular faucet goes 2.5gpm, so it's really just two faucets running.

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Probably use the information for modeling future maintenance/replacement schedules and such. Less "we see a crack, let's fix it" and more like "we're seeing X new cracks a week, let's bump up the maintenance of this sector by Y months" or whatever.

Thing is going to hit a turd, turtle shell it, and be lost forever.

If the water companies hadn't loaded up with 50 billionish of debt, and in the same time paying out 50 billionish in shareholder dividends they maybe they'd have more money to fix the issues of them losing 24% of the water.

The gas network doesn't have this problem.

Some guy got into an argument with me on another one of these posts and said plumbers would always be needed, robots couldn't chase a leak. Well I guess I win(I'm a plumber myself)

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Also if you spot a small crack you note the plcement it and keep checking it regularly to see if it is getting bigger.

The article shows a picture of the device you are referring to vs these machines, these are much smaller and would effectively live in the pipes, so measuring rotations or string length won't work. They are also working on an injectable sealant that can be used before the cracks become leaks.

I think the transport is the problem.

They lose 3bn litres of water - that's 3 bn litres that shouldn't have a bunch of force applied to it to set in motion.

Another thing is the fluid dynamics. Leaks fuck with the flow and makes it much more demanding to transport the water.

I want to hazard a guess that this style of wheel could also function as paddles better in the event that it gets a little deep somewhere along the line

We really need more attention on leaks. It's a massive issue, even in homes

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Fix those cracks so you can more efficiently dump raw sewage into the ocean! Fucking Tory red herring - tanks BBC.

Philly should take a pass on these little robo helpers for we will find our entire sewage system had to be replaced like a hundred years ago.

How do you get an RC signal at that distance

I just want to pour grease down my sinks. Make a robot that will let me do that.

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Actually they can get through just fine with regular wheels even in high water. before the rover goes through the sewer main they pull a rotating pressure washer that gets rid of most the grime that would prevent the wheels from getting traction. They get submerged frequently and can handle no problem. Only thing bad about it is there’s nothing to clean the camera after it gets wet so it can ruin the footage. Source I review footage as part of my work

This is already happening! Very easy improvement project for municipal districts, just requires the funding

Thanks, I upvoted that post and down voted the repost. I hate it when people do this. Yes I wouldn't have seen it otherwise, but I've seen several other subs spammed by dozens of duplicate posts (last one I monitored got up to about 50, I tagged the reposters in a comment on the actual first post. I know that sounds excessive on my part but by that point I'd gotten annoyed by the stupidity and wanted to shame some people.) It takes less than a minute to review the sub you're cross posting to. There are even websites that will tell you if something has been posted before.

In the UK at least CCTV surveys often can’t be completed if there is a large amount of silt or ragging in the sewer. I’d assume in clean water pipes there would be similar issues due to tuberculation in older mains and this may be why they’ve avoided wheels

Not in the UK. No idea what size sewers you’re talking about but never come across anything that does that and sewers being surcharged is often a reason for them being unable to complete the survey.

I’ve never seen a cctv review of a water main, I’d imagine your right but I don’t know. Im the map guy though my review of this stuff is purely for documentation and whatnot so I don’t have details on a lot of the hands on parts of it.

I review footage for two districts one is old enough to have brick sewer lines and yeah a lot cant be complete mostly VCP vitrified clay pipe

Hrr drr. It's actually what it's called. Do a search for "water cycle".

Are you osmosis jones?

I work for a rural water district most lines are 6-8 in. When the camera gets submerged we usually tell the contractor to get new footage. On my end it actually happens fairly often but I have to flag it each time as sagging pipe.

What issues do you usually run into if you don’t mind me asking? I’m curious if it’s much different than here

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Agree with you, also these "robots" won't be able to work in a pressurised pipe, so what's the point? When potable water mains burst/leak, there are much better ways of finding it than busting the main open at a perfectly good section to put some robots in.

Pointless. Install monitoring valves on the water system instead. Much simpler.

So if they need to get new footage I assume that’s because they can’t properly survey it?

Generally debris (from sewer collapse or silt), standing water and roots are the main reasons we can’t complete them. Jetting the sewers may help in some cases but roots can still be problematic even after that.

Water level is rarely due to sagging pipe in my experience as the surveyors can get through some water. It’s normally due to the sewer network being fully surcharged either due to storm events or operational issues.

Yeah they need to get new footage. What your sayings pretty consistent to what I see. I didn’t bring up roots blocking before because the type of tire wouldn’t help with a root ball. We usually don’t get too many blockages from debris though. The contractor has an issue with trying to save time and they pull the pressure watcher like 20 feet or less ahead of the rover. I’m going to try to attach an image of an odd one

For legal reasons they have to call it a water pipe robot, but we all know it's a bong robot.

Yeah they need to get new footage. What your sayings pretty consistent to what I see. I didn’t bring up roots blocking before because the type of tire wouldn’t help with a root ball. We usually don’t get too many blockages from debris though. The contractor has an issue with trying to save time and they pull the pressure watcher like 20 feet or less ahead of the rover. I’m going to try to attach an image of an odd one. - I can’t find the photo :(

The robots are good but we have multiple ways to test for leaks. We use smart hydrants which track transients in the pipe. So if something bursts you can find out right away.

You might think “well you would know because water would be coming out of the ground” but that’s not necessarily true. It can take days, or just not show up at all. But the treatment plant can tell us (the city) our usage is high and we should be on the lookout for a break.

We can also use listening devices. Leaks have a distinct sound so you can put a device onto a water valve or hydrant and listen to the main for hissing.

Just get one of those killer pipe-welding robots from Diamonds Are Forever.

It's not even needed. I work at a water utility company and we have pressure sensors on the pipes that will alert if there is a drop. This robot stuff is just bullshit over engineering for a problem that doesn't need solving.

The real problem as stated above, is getting to and repairing those leaks.

Only from grazing animals like cows. Definitely not human waste

Prof. Kirill Horoshenkov (mentioned in the article) was also my old masters thesis supervisor!

thought ya'll were talking robotic bongs. My heart, she hurts.

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Intriguing development. Coupled with fixed monitoring of sections of a pipe system this could be very helpful.

You’re fun.

And your mother dresses you appropriately

Was that supposed to be an insult? Sounds more like projection.

By the way, my mother is dead.

I'm currently working on an AI to do this spotting to allow for faster and cheaper inspections. Been a long process but it's decently hard because each contractor doing the inspection could have different cameras and text on the images.

Well sure, but pressurized pipe can be tested with hydrostatic testing at fire hydrants. Smoke testing too if they're old school. If they are chasing down a leak, there is a good chance that they will just shut off water for a day over a city block or housing development while they cam the entire system.

Not to be contrary, but I'm sure that what ever instrumentation would be called for to cam the pipe would be the same to have one of these little robots in. If they were faster then tethered robots or you could let a swarm run through pipes, that might be the good cost/benefit.

I would like to see those tiny gimbled drones that are 3" that could fly through 4" pipe.

> They make it seem like it's something innovative yet it's been around for a long time already

I mean not really. They explicitly mention in the article (and include a photo) of the traditional tethered robots that already exist, and then explain the advantages of this new approach.

You have to convert it to acre feet then the number shrinks and it makes sense. Numbers like billions is to difficult to visualize. So the UK uses about 11300 acre ft per day and you are leaking 2400.

I would expect it is still could be useful, unless the sensors allow to pinpoint the target area within a few meters ? Otherwise you have to start digging up the whole pipe section that is covered by a sensor ? Or am i missing something obvious ?

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Possibly due to the overwhelming possibility of Labour taking office in 2024. Labour hasn't been shy about wanting to rationalise the water industry in the UK.

The water companies here take the piss, to be frank. There is no competition, so it's a natural monopoly (per geographic area, there is one company responsible for the water supply), they pump shit into the waterways and take years to fix leaks.

All the while, these companies are raking in the cash and paying dividends to their shareholders. I genuinely don't care who "owns" the infrastructure, I'd just like whoever owns it to take their responsibilities seriously and keep it well maintained.

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So I actually work as a Sewer CCTV camera operator, what is demonstrated in the video isn't anything like what we have. The system in particular we use is made by a company called iBak. It has a camera that can pan & tilt with a +/- 120 degree panning range. The tractor it connects to can survey lines as small as 4 inches diameter.

We do have to deal with stuff like offsets and protruding taps, but we don't have wheels like the one on the video. Ours are typically either rubber or a tungsten composite and both are round like regular car tires, tracked systems do exist as well.

I do know for water there are options to be able to inspect lines from the inside but they can get expensive, mainly due to having to be ultra careful in making sure you aren't contaminating the line/system. That and with the pressures involved it has to be built like a literal tank, even more so than the ones used for sewer inspection. Heck the one I use is about 20lbs of nickel plated brass.

This is similar to how they discovered more ancient Celtic archeological sites in 2018 bc they had a drought and things dried out except certain places and they realized they were henges made of wood and the wood was still below ground retaining water and things were still green above them

So the network sensors detect flow / loss of pressure in a section of pipe.

When the team goes out to investigate, they have other sensors that use acoustics to pinpoint the leak. I personally work in software development so I don't actually deal with the leaks myself so unable to explain 100%, but from my understanding they place them at each end of a section of pipe they know there is a leak at, and then the vibrations will pin point where the leak is.

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I don't know much about it, why are the pipes so fragile that they crack every so often ?

I don't see how this wouldn't be possible with regular wheels as well. I used to have a toy car that could turn by changing the speed of the wheels, and they were regular circular ones.

I think the shape probably has more to do with traversing terrain easier.

I also choose this guys dead mother.

Ah that is actually pretty cool (and does indeed seem to make little robots nearly useless).

My band is called The Waterpipe Robots. We do electronica-raggae shit.

Your average off the shelf DJI drone can do like 6 miles, it’s mind boggling.

I assume it’d be a tiny fraction of that inside of a pipe though.

> It's actually what it's called. Do a search for "water cycle".

I confess, I was a bit nervous

It’s not every day one gets a lesson from the original Captain Obvious.

When I read the title, I pictured the folk-art robots that welders make out of pipes and metal scraps. Instead it's more like an RC car. I'm pretty disappointed.

What if they are teenagers? What then?

The systems I've seen really just use a long cable/wire. Pretty low-tech.

Dumb as fuck take

Then we've got ourselves a line of toys and a Saturday morning cartoon (I realize that's probably not a thing anymore).

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This doesn’t fix leaks, just detects them. It’s basically an untethered endoscope. Still need to get a plumber out to fix it

For now I can't imagine it'd be hard to include a 3d printer to fill holes

Yeah, depends on the amount of roots in my experience but generally agree it wouldn’t help. Honestly not sure if it will help at all but only reason I can see why they’d do it.

Could be you don’t see many if they are jetting the sewer as standard. Generally not the case in the UK and we’d only jet if there is a need to do so. Assume it saves money overall even if we need to pay again.

It would be magical if these robots could patrol pressured pipes to stop leakage of clean potable water

If it’s not standard for you it’s probably not standard most places in the us either. I’m split between a county and a military base. The military contract requires we us to jet 10% of the total length of line every year. Thanks for letting me know that through I made an assumption that was wrong.

Yeah what the heck. The robots aren't stopping anything, totally misleading title. Where are my pipe-sealing autonomous vehicles?

So that the robot can adjust its position or speed at any situation. That's a good observation bro.