Pervasive autonomous sensing 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替换价值在1至2万亿美元之间。类似的数字可以分配给其他类型的地下管道资产，这些资产提供清洁的水和天然气。仅中国一地，每年就新铺设下水道4万公里。然而，人们对这些管道的状况知之甚少，尽管供水和天然气供应公用事业公司面临压力，以确保它们连续、安全和高效地运行。现有的检测解决方案速度慢，成本相对较高，而且都需要人工干预。这个博士项目的学术优势在于，它将为开发一种普遍存在的埋地管道检测自主传感技术铺平道路，该技术目前尚不存在，但亟需。该项目的创新之处将是研究一组动态可重新配置的声波、无线电波或红外传感器的性能，用于检查下水道和清洁水管。这是以前从未做过的。预计在未来10-20年内，当机器人技术准备就绪时，这些传感器将部署在自主机器人上。这里的关键学术挑战是证明这项技术是可行的、准确的和坚固的，可以在一系列完全超载和部分填充的埋地管道中跨规模运行。这将有助于彻底消除检查和修复埋地管道所需的人为干预。

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.