Rehabilitating cast iron pipes through lining offers several advantages, including increased durability, reduced water leaks, and minimal disruption.This approach presents a cost effective and environmentally friendly solution by sealing cracks and joints, extending the pipeline's lifespan, and reducing water wastage, all while avoiding the need for trench excavation. However, due to the relining process, branch connections are sealed and need to be reestablished. To address the issue of rehabilitating small-diameter water pipes, we have designed a modular robot capable of traversing and working within 200 meter long, 100 mm diameter cast iron pipes. This robot is equipped with perception functions to detect, locate, and characterize the branch connections in cast iron pipes and relocate them after lining, as well as machining functions. A first prototype of this system has been developed and validated on an 8 meter long section, in a laboratory environment.
@article{arxiv.2405.14382,
title = {Multi-purpose robot for rehabilitation of small diameter water pipes},
author = {Julien Feiguel and Mouhamed NDiaye and Pascal Chambaud and Adrien Chambellan and Pierre Blanc and Steve Bourgeois and Lucas Labarussiat and Clemence Dubois and Audrey Vigneron and Thomas Desrez and Alain Riwan and Caroline Vienne},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.14382},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
Accepted to the IEEE ICRA Workshop on Field Robotics 2024