From UCI
While the unseasonal inundation of the Southland may have taken attention away temporarily from another water woe -- the multiple geysers gushing across the region after pipeline breaks -- researchers in Irvine say they are getting more aid and support for their intriguing means of fixing a $245 billion a year drain on the national economy. They're pressing ahead with their high-tech efforts to build a robot that would crawl through the aging, decrepit underground infrastructure and apply special, tough wraps and coatings in water pipes, many of which exceed a century in age. If this smart, sensitive machine can be developed, it would save huge costs in the need to dig up and replace old, failing pipes. Besides creating spectacular gushers for goofball TV broadcasters to tarry around, those bad lines contribute to the disappearance of an estimated 6 billion gallons of water annually -- enough to supply the Golden State for a year.
Photo: Robot researcher Maria Feng / SteveZylius, University Communications, UCI
High-tech robot envisioned as means to repair old, leaky water pipes
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