Pipe Hunters system has a series of expandable skate type wheels which surround an inspection camera and grip the sides of pipes without slipping.
super sewer robots
And you thought the matrix was fiction? Robots designed to access hostile areas such as radioactive areas are also used beneath the streets to clean or repair sewers or to lay cables. They were among the first things on the scene after 911 or Katrina and have a particular rugged beauty. Vote for your faves.
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A Hybrid Model-Based Vision System for Autonomous Navigation , this is one of the state of the art systems which can navigate turns and obstacles, looking like a giant caterpiller.
This terrifying looking South Korean sewage inspection robot was recently used to capture a naked fugitive from beneath the streets of Seoul.
Sold by Canadian company, Inuktun, who make a range of sewer robots, the Versatrax 300 is a remotely-operated long-range pipe inspection system, not a robot per se, but a remote device.
Another remote controlled device, powered by a water jet, rather than motorized tracks or wheels, it slides through pipes with small wheels on skate like runners.
This is what people had to do before there were sewer robots. A 6 mile crawl/dive through deadly gases in an LA sewer in the 1930s. See the popular mechanics archive site for details.
Taris are a Russian company that have all manner of James Bond like devices for swimming and crawling through dirty or radioactive environments.
Originally designed for human inaccessible sewers in Switzerland, SAM is now used to law fiber optic cable in sewage pipes, for CityNet.
Aries systems have all manner of badass gear for inspecting sewers, we like this "manhole to manhole", mano a mano device.
Developed by the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Technology (BMBF).
The robot carries intelligent sensors that are based on a 3-D optical sensor, ultrasonic sensors for inside pipe inspection, and a microwave sensor for the inspection of the soil surrounding the pipe wall. Defects are detected by means of sensor signals which are ‘intelligently’ connected to each other and are evaluated by fuzzy logic.
Sewer robots have to be extremely robust, using components such as the latest bell-type armature motors from Faulhaber
