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."

Now we know

How the Sentinels got their start.

  snarkth

Someone has to say it

I, for one, welcome our new robotic underlords.

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THIS IS NOT FUNNY! And no, no one has to say it. This site is perpetually headed waaaaaay downhill, and has never been one for humor (at least humor of the current decade...)

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and no, I DON'T need to go AC to say this.

Damn...

Now where are we humans going to hide when Skynet becomes active?

Identifiers?

I would hope they would make them easy to identify and track, Imagine stumbling upon some weird robotic beasty that washed out of a storm drain and thinking it's the beginning of the robot revolution or something, Maybe they could just write "NOT EVIL" in magic marker or something, that would make ME feel better.

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Just make the components in google colours.

Re:Identifiers?

Add an "I'm feeling lucky" button to really top off its "none-evilness".

Re:Identifiers?

Maybe they could just write "NOT EVIL" in magic marker or something, that would make ME feel better.

How about "Don't Panic" in nice, friendly letters?

Horror

This sounds like a bad horror-movie plot. Next they'll start coming up from the ground in some old people's home and killing everyone, and then the police get called in to investigate, but they just can't tell what the hell happened. Then more isolated incidents start to occur which leads the main character and his expendable co-stars into the dark abandoned subway tunnels to search for this menace from the underneath!

The final scene involves a huge explosion or EMP burst that destroys all the robots but also leaves everyone in the sewer in complete darkness. Cut, print, that's a wrap. Where's my money?

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Next they'll start coming up from the ground in some old people's home and killing everyone

Nah, they won't kill old people, they'll just eat their medicine for fuel. Besides, I've got my life insurance policy from Old Glory Insurance so I feel safe, even though the robots may strike at any time.

Old Glory Insurance. [google.com] For when the metal ones

Robots good at checking pipes

The SMART PIG [wikipedia.org] is used to check on gas pipes. It saves a fortune on using the old, dumb pigs that they used to have to force through the pipes to inspect/clean them prior to the invention of Magnetic Flux Leakage techniques.

There is a pretty good SMART PIG display at the Manchester Sci/Tech museum (free) with an actual 80's vintage inspection unit donated by British Gas.

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Yeah, but can it fly?

at least someone's checking them

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.

Well, since they're checking the tubes, maybe they can find the internet that Ted St

Finally!

We desperately NEED something to keep the tubes clear. Sometimes it takes a whole WEEK for an Internet to get to me!

The Cousins of the Sewer Robots

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!!

*sigh*

I'm not a paid member; can someone please tag this story "ReallyBadInternetJokeBait"?

Only the beginning

Great, how long before they start using similar robots to check your prostate?

(Ha! You thought this was going to be another reference to The Matrix/Terminator, didn't you?)

You can do it at home too

Last year, my webpage describing how I did something similar (but spectacularly cheaper with the commensurate drop in ability) using some off the shelf electronics and an R/C toy was featured here on Slashdot, my first slashdotting!

http://hallert.net/misc/tankcam/tankcam.html [hallert.net]

There are other crawlspaces out there, get under your houses and make your own robots do your bidding!

What'd be really neat...

is if they leeched power from the cables at open nodes in the system and just roamed on a set path at all times.

Autonomous little service droids, keeping everything working - now that's the future.

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From the look of this thing you would need straight lines, plenty of clearance, and two rails running next to each transmission line.

Good point. In Philly as late as the 1960's there were portions of the water line that were running through hollowed out t

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You're right, the real world is a messy place--lots of underground transmission lines are just plopped down into a big tray and are not very accessible to just about any method that would inspect the quality of the insulation. However, with very little eff

Re:Will this work in the real world?

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.

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Well, of course! This is Senator Ted Stevens' solution to the quake damage in East Asia!

The submitter must have forgotten to include that bit......

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For a moment there I thought we were talking the start of the matrix :P