Every year, 40,000 kilometres of new sewer pipes are laid in China alone, yet no one knows the condition of most buried pipes until they fail. This matters because water and gas utilities rely on slow, labour-intensive inspections—CCTV cameras or workers entering pipes—that cover only a tiny fraction of the network. Serious degradation is routinely missed, leading to unexpected bursts, wastewater flooding, gas leaks, and emergency repairs that disrupt roads and buried infrastructure for days. The problem is global: Europe’s sewer assets alone are worth €2 trillion, and US water collection systems have a replacement value of $1–2 trillion. This project aims to replace sporadic inspections with swarms of tiny, autonomous robots that live inside pipes permanently. Each robot is cheap and simple, but working together they can continuously detect sub-millimetre cracks, corrosion, or joint failures as they develop. The robots navigate, communicate, and guide repair equipment to defects at the earliest sign of deterioration. Because they are tiny, they cannot block pipes if they fail; because they are abundant, losing some does not stop the swarm. If successful, this would transform buried pipe maintenance from reactive emergency repairs into continuous, proactive care—saving billions in replacement costs and preventing the daily disruption of leaking water mains and gas escapes.
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In Europe, the total value of sewer assets amounts to 2 trillion Euros. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that water collection systems in the USA have a total replacement value between $1 and $2 trillion. Similar figures can be assigned to other types of buried pipe assets which 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 condition of these pipes despite the pressure on water and gas supply utility companies to ensure that they operate continuously, safely and efficiently. In order to do this properly, the utility operator must identify the initial signs of failure and then respond to the onset of failure rapidly enough to avoid loss of potable water supply, wastewater flooding or gas escape. This is attempted through targeted inspection which is typically carried out through man-entry or with CCTV approaches, although more sophisticated (e.g. tethered) devices have been developed and are used selectively. Nevertheless, and in spite of the fact that the UK is a world leader in this research area, these approaches are slow and labour intensive, analysis is subjective, and their deployment disrupts traffic. Moreover, because these inspections are necessarily infrequent and only cover a small proportion of the pipe network, serious degradation is often missed and pipe failures occur unexpectedly, requiring emergency repairs that greatly disrupt life of the road and adjacent buried utility infrastructure. This Programme Grant proposes a radical change in terms of buried pipe sensing in order to address the issues of pipe inspection and rehabilitation. It builds upon recent advances in sensors, nano- and micro-electronics research, communication and robotic autonomous systems and aims to develop a completely new pervasive robotics sensing technology platform which is autonomous and covers the entire pipe network. These robots will be able to travel, cooperate and interrogate the pipes from the inside, detect the onset of any defects continuously, navigate to and zoom on sub-millimetre scale defects to examine them in detail, communicate and guide any maintenance equipment to repair the infrastructure at an early sign of deterioration. By being tiny, they do not present a danger of being stuck, blocking the pipe if damaged or run out of power. By being abundant, they introduce a high level of redundancy in the inspection system, so that routine inspection can continue after a loss of a proportion of the sensors in the swarm. By making use of the propagation of sonic waves and other types of sensing these robots can monitor any changes in the condition of the pipe walls, joints, valves and lateral connections; they can detect the early development and growth of sub-millimetre scale operational or structural faults and pipe corrosion. An important benefit of this sensing philosophy is that it mimics nature, i.e. the individual sensors are small, cheap and unsophisticated, but a swarm of them is highly capable and precise. This innovation will be the first of its kind to deploy swarms of miniaturised robots in buried pipes together with other emerging in-pipe sensor, navigation and communication solutions with long-term autonomy. Linked to the related previous work, iBUILD (EP/K012398), ICIF (EP/K012347) and ATU's Decision Support System (EP/K021699), this Programme Grant will create the technology that has flexibility to adapt to different systems of governance globally. This work will be done in collaboration with a number of industry partners who will help to develop a new set of requirements for the new pervasive robotic sensing platform to work in clean water, wastewater and gas pipes. They will support the formation and operation of the new research Centre of Autonomous Sensing for Buried Infrastructure in the UK and ensure that the results of this research have strong practical outcomes.
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