A city’s buried pipes, cracked roads, and ageing lamp posts will be repaired by autonomous robots, not human crews. The project tackles the grand challenge of eliminating all streetworks disruption in UK cities by 2050—the constant digging, traffic jams, and noise that plague urban life. Today, fixing a pothole or inspecting a sewer requires closing roads, deploying workers, and often tearing up the street. This research replaces that with three robotic systems: “Perch and Repair” drones that maintain lighting columns as communication hubs; “Perceive and Patch” flying swarms that autonomously inspect and repair highway defects like potholes; and “Fire and Forget” hybrid robots that live indefinitely inside utility pipes, performing inspection, repair, metering, and reporting. If successful, the work would keep critical infrastructure—water pipes, gas lines, fibre-optic cables, and road surfaces—functioning without ever disturbing the surface or disrupting traffic. The robots must operate in complex, live city environments alongside humans and natural systems, so the project also addresses the socio-technical challenges of integrating autonomous machines into public space. This is applied engineering with a clear practical endpoint: zero-disruption streetworks within three decades.
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Our vision is that of a city where infrastructure is autonomously maintained and dynamically responsive, focused on: securing the health & wellbeing of its citizens; contributing to flourishing and sustainable natural systems in the city; and creating positive economic and societal outlooks. Towards our vision we will tackle the Grand Challenge of: Zero disruption from Streetworks in UK Cities by 2050. Our strongly interdisciplinary team aspires to fulfil our Grand Challenge through pioneering scientific research (and research methods) into: autonomous systems for minimally invasive infrastructure sensing, diagnosis and repair; development of advanced robots for deployment in complex live city environments; and the socio-technical intricacy of the robot - human - natural systems interfaces. We will develop pioneering robot designs, technical implementations and socio-economic impact cases linked to specific application requirements, starting with three case-study systems: o "Perch and Repair" remote maintenance and modernisation of lighting columns to promote their use as multifunctional platforms for city communication nodes; o "Perceive and Patch" Swarms of flying vehicles for autonomous inspection, diagnostics, repair and prevention of highway defects (e.g. potholes); o "Fire and forget" hybrid robots designed to operate indefinitely within live utility pipes performing inspection, repair, metering and reporting tasks.
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