Pervasive autonomous sensing of buried pipes

埋地管道的普遍自主传感

• 批准号: 1943491
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-1943491
• 关键词: Pervasive; autonomous; sensing; buried; pipes

In Europe, the total value of the sewer assets amounts to Euros 2 trillion. The US EPA estimates that water collection systems in the USA have a total replacement value between USD 1 and USD 2 trillion. Similar figures can be assigned to other types of buried pipe assets that supply clean water and gas. In China alone 40,000 km of new sewer pipes are laid every year. However, little is known about the conditions of these pipes despite the pressure on water and gas supply utility companies to ensure that they operate continuously, safely, and efficiently. Existing inspection solutions are slow, relatively expensive and all require human intervention.The academic excellence in this PhD project is that it will pave the way to the development of a pervasive autonomous sensing technology for buried pipe inspection which does not currently exist, but badly needed. The novelty of this project will be to study the performance of a dynamically reconfigurable swarm of acoustic, radio wave or IR sensors for the inspection of sewer and clean water pipes. This has not been done before. It is expected that these sensors will be deployed on autonomous robots when the robotic technology is ready in the next 10-20 years. Key academic challenges here is to demonstrate that this technology is feasible, accurate and robust to operate across scales in a range of fully surcharged and partially filled buried pipes. This will contribute to the complete elimination of human intervention required for the inspection and rehabilitation of buried pipes.

在欧洲，下水道资产的总价值达到2万亿欧元。美国环保署估计，美国的水收集系统的总重置价值在1至2万亿美元之间。类似的数字也可以分配给其他类型的提供清洁水和天然气的埋地管道资产。仅在中国，每年就铺设4万公里的新下水管道。然而，人们对这些管道的状况知之甚少，尽管水和天然气供应公司面临着确保它们连续、安全、高效运行的压力。现有的检查解决方案速度慢，相对昂贵，而且都需要人工干预。这个博士项目的学术优势在于，它将为地埋管道检测的普遍自主传感技术的发展铺平道路，这种技术目前还不存在，但迫切需要。这个项目的新颖之处在于研究一种动态可重构的声学、无线电波或红外传感器群的性能，用于检查下水道和清洁水管。这是前所未有的。预计在未来10-20年，机器人技术成熟后，这些传感器将部署在自主机器人上。这里的主要学术挑战是证明该技术是可行的、准确的和可靠的，可以在一系列完全附加和部分填充的埋地管道中进行操作。这将有助于完全消除检查和修复埋地管道所需的人为干预。