Automated Sewer Defect Identification for Rapid Sewer Inspection (ASDER)– An application of Privacy and Transparency-Focused Artificial Intelligence

用于快速下水道检查的自动下水道缺陷识别 (ASDER) – 注重隐私和透明度的人工智能的应用

• 批准号: 10076017
• 金额: $ 6.34万
• 依托单位: INTELLIGENTUM LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Grant for R&D
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10076017
• 关键词: Automated; Sewer; Defect; Identification; Rapid

The UK has a network of over 393,460 kms of sewers (Department for International Trade, 2023) which collect over 11 billion litres of wastewater treated at over 9,000 sewage treatment works (DEFRA,2022; The Independent, 2014). Factors including the sewers being mostly overaged (over 100 years old), increased rapid urbanisation leading to acute under-capacity, frequent extreme weather events and inappropriate disposal, all cause the sewers to experience intermittent collapse, blockages, and particularly incessant leaks and associated pollution episodes.Sewer leaks/discharge cause pollution of 64% of UK water bodies (UK Parliament Committee,2022). Consequently, punitive fines are being issued by courts with record £90m fine for Southern Water in 2021 (Environment Agency,2021) and plans for £250m fines are currently in the works (DEFRA,2023). These penalties are devasting and revenue-decimating hence sewer owners are now desperate to avoid leaks. Avoidance comes mainly through frequent inspections that begets quick intervention.The sewer inspection process is however inefficient, causing many sewer inspection companies to struggle with backlog. It involves sending cabled horizontal robots with CCTV cameras into the sewer through a manhole or inspection chamber. The robot is controlled remotely from a van with access to the CCTV videos. The controller, a sewer inspector, moves the robot slowly, pans the camera circumferentially to check for defects at every metre, and documents each defect. This process can take 10days for one-kilometre sewer length. The video and document are assessed in the office to produce a defect inspection report on another day, leading to 11days (i.e., 15,840-minutes). Sewer companies' multiple vans/inspectors have not solved the backlog issue.There is therefore an unmet market need for a highly efficient sewer inspection process to enable frequent inspection. This project (ASDER) will develop Artificial Intelligence and Big Data models that will automatically identify defects from sewer inspection videos in 5-minutes and produce reports that can be used to verify results for transparency (trustworthy AI). This will mean that inspection robots can go through sewers at a reasonable pace (e.g., 6km/hr) simply for video capture, completing a one-kilometre sewer video capture in 10-mins. This total of 15mins represents over 1000% productivity increase on the average 11-days used currently and will enable a lot more inspections in a short space of time thus helping clear backlogs, reduce costs, avoid pollution episodes and associated fines and increase sustainability among other benefits.

英国拥有超过393，460公里的下水道网络（国际贸易部，2023年），收集了9，000多个污水处理厂处理的超过110亿升废水（DEFRA，2022年;独立报，2014年）。下水道大多老化（超过100年），快速城市化导致严重的容量不足，频繁的极端天气事件和不适当的处置等因素都导致下水道经历间歇性坍塌，堵塞，特别是不断泄漏和相关的污染事件。下水道泄漏/排放导致英国64%的水体污染（英国议会委员会，2022年）。因此，法院将在2021年对南方水务公司处以创纪录的9000万英镑罚款（环境署，2021年），目前正在制定2.5亿英镑罚款的计划（DEFRA，2023年）。这些处罚是毁灭性的和收入减少，因此下水道业主现在不顾一切地避免泄漏。避免主要是通过频繁的检查，从而产生快速干预。然而，下水道检查过程效率低下，导致许多下水道检查公司与积压作斗争。它涉及发送有线水平机器人与闭路电视摄像机进入下水道通过一个沙井或检查室。机器人是从一辆货车上远程控制的，可以访问闭路电视视频。控制员是一名下水道检查员，他缓慢地移动机器人，将摄像机沿圆周方向平移以检查每一米的缺陷，并记录每一个缺陷。这一过程可能需要10天的一公里长的下水道。视频和文件在办公室进行评估，以在另一天产生缺陷检查报告，导致11天（即，15，840分钟）。下水道公司的多辆货车/检查员并没有解决积压问题。因此，市场需要一种高效的下水道检查过程，以实现频繁的检查。该项目（ASDER）将开发人工智能和大数据模型，这些模型将在5分钟内自动识别下水道检查视频中的缺陷，并生成可用于验证结果透明度的报告（值得信赖的人工智能）。这将意味着检查机器人可以以合理的速度通过下水道（例如，6 km/hr），仅需10分钟即可完成一公里下水道视频拍摄。这15分钟的时间意味着生产率比目前使用的平均11天提高了1000%以上，并将在短时间内进行更多的检查，从而有助于清除积压，降低成本，避免污染事件和相关罚款，并提高可持续性等好处。