Design and Development of a Sewage Pipe Inspection Robot

Sewage pipes are prone to damage and defects. Manual human inspection provides an unsafe and harsh environment for inspection. Moreover, this method of inspection is unsanitary and difficult to conduct in small diameter pipes. The utilization of a sewage inspection robot can help solve these issues. Different sized robots can be used to inspect different sized pipes, and the equipment onboard the robot can allow it to detect and localize defects in the pipe wall. In this work, an investigation and implementation of a sewage pipe inspection robot as well as an enhancement on the current technologies is conducted. A crack detection system and a localization system are implemented to provide the user with sufficient information about pipe health throughout the long and possibly complex pipe network. This will facilitate preventive maintenance techniques. The combination of these two systems will allow the preemptive detection of faults in the inner pipe wall and to know exactly which point in the pipeline grid requires maintenance. Service engineers can then maintain/replace the damaged pipe section.