Brush Robot
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
A robot being developed in China uses bottle brushes to inspect pipes.
Most gas, sewer or other pipes are inspected by a robot known as a “pig”. Sometimes these pipes are blocked and cannot be inspected, becoming “unpiggable”.
Zhelong Wang and Hong Gu of Dalian University of Technolog in China have developed a robot that can inspect the “unpiggable” pipelines. The robot is made up of bottle brushes connected by pneumatic pipes and is very flexible. The robot is also tethered to lines that provide air pressure for the pneumatic pipes, electrical and data connections.
I suppose they could also just send in an army of bristlebots to clean the pipes.
Link via (New Scientist)
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