Acoustic communication technology for robots in buried pipes

The UK's clean water pipe network is losing water at an alarming rate of 1161 million m3/year, or over 20% of the treated water put into supply. In response to this major water utilities companies are investing into the state of the art research centres (for example, Northumbrian Water are developing the National Leakage Research and Test Centre, https://waterinnovation.challenges.org/winners/nlrtc/) while the University of Sheffield have already set up the Integrated Civil and Infrastructure Research Centre .

The new bespoke facilities available in ICAIR (ICAIR, https://icair.ac.uk/). will be open to the student to develop a world lead in acoustic communication science, technology and standard communication protocols which can be adopted by swarms of autonomous robots inspecting and repairing a massive network of buried pipes managed by water utilities. These robots, developed as part of EP/S016813/1 Programme Grant (www.pipebots.ac.uk), will operate in over 1M km of pressurised water supply and partially filled wastewater pipe network.

It is expected that the student will make use of machine learning, statistical modelling and other components of AI technologies to develop a robust acoustic communication algorithms.

It has been shown through previous research that reliable communication within robot swarms in buried pipelines is essential for the robotic inspection approach to work efficiently but the much needed communication technology does not exist and is urgently needed. It is expected that this science needed to develop the technology and technology itself will be transferable to other pipe networks in petrochemical and nuclear industries, telecommunication and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems.