A Robotic Cable Inspection System

Roland Piquepaille writes "In a short article, Popular Science reports that researchers at the University of Washington have built a robotic cable inspection system. This system should help utility companies to maintain their networks of subterranean cables. The robot, dubbed Cruiser, is about 4-feet-long and is designed like a snake. When it detects an anomaly on an underground cable, it sends a message to a human operator via Wi-Fi. The first field tests took place in New Orleans in December 2006. But a commercial version should not be available before 2012."

Hmm...

[Cervantes (612861)]

Hmmm, 4 feet long, designed like a snake...

bring on the pr0n jokes...

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[protolith (619345)]

Does it come in more than one model? Like the John Holmmes or Ron Jeremy models...

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[markov_chain (202465)]

How about multi-tentacled models?

had to be done

[tedivm (942879)]

I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.

Re:had to be done

[Known Nutter (988758)]

wouldn't they be Underlords?

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[punkass (70637)]

(-1: Whiner)

Samuel L. Jackson appointed DIRNSA!

[by Anonymous Coward]

> The robot, dubbed Cruiser, is about 4-feet-long and is designed like a snake. When it detects an anomaly on an underground cable, it sends a message to a human operator via Wi-Fi.

"That's IT! I have had it with these muthafuckin' splices in these muthafuckin' fiba-optic cables!"

The Garbageman and the Landscaper

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor (1089561)]

I was just thinking about maintenance robots yesterday. It was during a nice walk along the creek in our town. I was admiring the quaint little stream of water and the stones over which it flowed and the grass through which it wound, and then the rusty shopping cart.

The world will be a more beautiful place when the autonomous robots start to finally appear.

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[Kadin2048 (468275)]

I was just thinking about maintenance robots yesterday. It was during a nice walk along the creek in our town. I was admiring the quaint little stream of water and the stones over which it flowed and the grass through which it wound, and then the rusty shopping cart.

The world will be a more beautiful place when the autonomous robots start to finally appear.

Why? Then you'll just be tripping over discarded robot bits -- battery packs, broken manipulators, spent fuel-cell refills -- instead of beer cans and sh

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[CrazyJim1 (809850)]

I thought he was just being sarcastic.

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[R3d M3rcury (871886)]

I think the concept was "Wouldn't it be nice to have a robotic garbageman who spends his life cruising along the river and picking up discarded crap that people have left."

It's kind of a nice concept, assuming that everything worked correctly...

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[Drooling Iguana (61479)]

"and it does it with a smile and never touches you..."

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[c6gunner (950153)]

You know why the shopping cart is rusty? Because hundreds of people just like you have walked by that quaint little stream, and the stones, and the grass, and said to themselves "oh look. how horrible. an old shopping cart". And then they carried on strolling and humming, leaving the cart for the next passer-by to tisk-tisk about.

blog spam

[PatentMagus (1083289)]

Yet more piquepaille blog spam. a robotic cable inspection system [popsci.com] is the one and only link to hit.

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[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

Rolands article has links to the

Main Seal project homepage [washington.edu]

Movies and pictures of it in action [washington.edu]

Don't just dismiss Roland, I found the popsci link rather lacking in comparison.

It Begins

[umbrellasd (876984)]

"Squiddy. Coming in quick."

Automated post: FA void of anything new or useful

[viking80 (697716)]

WiFi, or any other radio does not work in salt water.

This is an automated comment generated by a grease monkey script. If you agree that the Featured Article posted by a blog whore, or if you do not want to read any future articles with no useful or new content, you can gray out all Roland Piquepaille articles with this script:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/5735/ [userscripts.org] [userscripts.org]

Enjoy!

The part that automatically posts this information is not included.

A biological particle accellerator cleaner

[MichaelCrawford (610140)]

From time to time they need to cut and re-weld the vacuum beam pipe in the CERN particle accellerator. This can leave iron filings in the tube that could screw up the beam. I was told when I spent the Summer of '93 there that the way they clean the pipe out is to attach a brush to the tail of a weasel and have him run down the tube.

And while offtopic, definitely funny is that one time after they'd sealed the tube back up, they couldn't get the beam to go through a particular section. Investigators found a couple beer bottles spaced several meters apart inside the tube.

holy #$%& a subject!

[blhack (921171)]

I think that this is using the term 'robot' a bit loosely. This isn't really any more of a robot than the wireless thermometer that I have outside my kitchen. If you could drop the thing on top of a cable, and it would just wander all over(under?) the city looking for bad cables until you called it home; if it had the ability to make a (psuedo-)decision on what to do next based on its surroundings....THAT would be a robot.

I guess that IMHO a robot should be a machine that could do something that would seem "random" to a casual observer.

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[radicalnerd (930674)]

A wireless thermometer is just a sensor. This robot *does do onboard signal processing to help it navigate. From the popsci article:

Human operators can upload a basic mission plan, which the robot's circuit-board brain fine-tunes as it encounters damaged cable.

How does this work?

[Anarchysoft (1100393)]

It looks like it sits on top of the cable and crawls along. But, isn't the top of the cable normally covered with dirt? Does it require an outside tube or little mines or what? Does it just dig its way along? I don't see how it can be used on existing cables. Could someone explain? :)

Steam tunnels or old sewers, perhaps?

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

I'm not entirely sure, but I guess the idea is that it inspects cables that are installed in tunnels or other large conduits, underground.

Not sure how useful that is, or who it's most useful to, because in my area all the underground utilities are laid right in the dirt, cut-and-cover fashion, with a backhoe (or, one assumes, the really early parts with steam shovels or picks and spades). The only places I personally know of that have big underground vaults and tunnels are universities that have centralized

What about aerial cables?

[nexuspal (720736)]

Probably would make this linemans job much safer
link [buffalostate.edu]
PS, thats a helicopter he's sitting on...

Roland rides again

[dbIII (701233)]

In 1995 in one workplace I attended there were two remote pipe inspection robots with very limited functionality gathering dust on shelves because there were better ones available. A new design is interesting but Roland really should realise that it is not a new idea to be hyped. Can somebody buy him a subscription to New Scientist for things like this and a second hand thermodynamics textbook for the earlier ones?

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[moro_666 (414422)]

the autonomous part comes up when the soil is wet and wi-fi signal won't get through or when the material above the snake happens just to be a metal plate thick enough.

warning, this comment contains sarcasm