«It had a significant impact on our system and our community»testifies Vince Astorino, director of operations at the Public Works Office of the County of Macomb, in the State of Michigan (United States). This evokes here a rare event which took place in the city of Fraser, at the end of December 2016, when a house collapsed in the sewers, explains the American magazine Wired. Other buildings, as well as a 15 -kilometer road portion were also affected.
The cause? A sewer driving of 3.4 meters in diameter which has simply collapsed. Estimated cost of the incident: $ 75 million (around 71 million euros at the time), not to mention the potential economic losses for surrounding businesses. To avoid this kind of accident, wastewater evacuation pipes must be inspected regularly, but this delicate work can be dangerous for maintenance agents.
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The county of Macomb has therefore decided to change his method by replacing his agents with drones, capable of inspecting safely and at a lower cost the regional wastewater network: the use of such a device would reduce the note by 40%. In 2024, an Asio X drone, manufactured by the Flybotix company, was therefore sent to the sewers, coupled with analysis software called Sewerai.
-Never without my AI
The drone, guided by a pilot that has remained withdrawn, records videos in high definition. The maneuver is not always obvious, says Vince Astorino: “It’s dark, the air can change quickly and keep a trajectory above a water flow in a narrow pipe is a challenge.” Once the images have been recorded, it’s Sewerai’s turn to get into play.
Thanks to an artificial intelligence (AI) specially trained for this kind of mission, the program manages to automatically detect the potential weak points of the structures. “We did tests by comparing the videos analyzed manually to those treated by Sewerai. Each time, the application has better detected faults ”advance the county employee.
Only limit, the size of the Asio X prevents it for the moment from inspecting the narrowest areas. This is not the case with the Drone of the Swiss company Flyability, whose machine named Elios 3 has been specifically designed for this kind of thankless task. Equipped with a protective cage, lighting at 16,000 lumens, a 4K camera and a Lidar system (detection and laser telemetry), it was designed to evolve in small spaces. It can also detect the presence of explosive gas and generate 3D models to better detect possible anomalies within structures.
Eloise McMinn Mitchell, communications manager at Flyability, says that sales of this model explode, in particular for sewer inspections. “To inspect a section of sewer under a road, you need at least four people. With the drone only two people are enough. ” Who knows, maybe we will one day discover the lair of ninja turtles thanks to a drone?
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