A Twisty Maze Of Sewerbot Links, All Different

skids writes "Look before you sit! Sewer systems all over the world are under seige by robots laying fiber to the curb -- and beyond. There's even a standards body forming. (Doesn't that consitute a one-level recursion of 'pipes carrying filth'?)" It's been a while since we last mentioned these things.

Why use sewer lines?

[Jason Pollock]

Sewer lines are dirty, nasty confined places, do we really need the roto-rooter guy taking out our broadband connection?

Everyone sees roads continually being torn up to lay cable. Why don't the municipalities lay a "data pipe" to go along with the gas and sewer lines.

That way, there's a maintained pipe for power and data to run down. The city rents space, and you don't have roads being torn up anymore. Instead of once per carrier per service, it's torn up once period! New services become a _lot_ cheaper because you don't have to pay to repave the roads!

Cities would love it because they get a steady income, companies love it because it doesn't involve insane amounts of capex... Win all around?

Jason Pollock

Steam Tunnel Repair Robot

[coloth]

These robots reminded me of W.I.S.O.R. [discover.com], a robot built by Honeybee Robotics [honeybeerobotics.com] to repair the ancient steam pipes under New York's streets.

Very interesting to anyone reading this would be a docudrama [160.79.86.26] about the creation of W.I.S.O.R. This is a cross between Pi, 2001, and Junkyard Wars.

Of peripheral, yet substantial interest is Honeybee's RoboTender [honeybeerobotics.com], a robotic bartender.

Re:How do you protect the fibers from the sewage?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of sewer leakage is actually due to the soil and geography. From my public health studies, I seem to recall Florida having a LOT of problems. In the northeast, maples are notorious for finding cracks in the older iron and cement based home sewer piping.

I thought about talking to my munipality about doing this instead of using pole attachments (since the utilities are very hard to get a hold of around here in southcentral Pennsylvania). However, the number one problem that I thought of was in most area, you *always* have to call roto-rooter once in a while.

So you will have to protect that cable quite well. When you have a sewer backup or slowdown, they put in that motorized snake with the single or dual edge blade (essentially, somewhat flexible steel knife edge) that scrapes the inside of the pipe, moving about 1/4" every rotation so 4 "cuts" per inch, and I doubt that even a strong fiber line can take that kind of abuse. Plus, it sounds like a lot of these lines may not be exactly well secured.

So you would have to place the fiber to the wall to prevent snagging and wrapping around the snake, and have it well encased to prevent it from the blade. Seems a lot of trouble. Less so than a digging up a city street, but I wouldn't want primary OC3 lines run this way.

Re:security

[myov]

A few years ago, the most of the cable system in Ontario (as well as other ISP's) lost internet access when the fiber lines were cut. The lines ran along railway right-of-way to the @home connection in the U.S.

One night, two drunk guys decided to dig up telecom cables and sell the copper (not realizing it's all fiber). In the process, they cut the primary and backup lines.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Thiis funny but

[Dollyknot]

From the comments it seems like people are only seeing the comical side to all this. In countries with established broadband networks it would have an uphill fight getting established. Where it will probably make inroads, is in towns around the world that don't already have a cheap highcoverage broadband infrastructure. The cost per mile figure is the one to watch, point being is sewage companies all ready use robots to inspect sewers in many countries. If the muncipal sewerage companies see that they can increase their revenue by using this technology, without an enormouse outlay of capital they will pitch their prices to beneath the prices of existing methods and money talks.

I remember when they cabled my area, the cost must have run into millions, all those trenches, don't come cheap in terms of man hours. And is reflected in the price I pay for my broadband connection, those loans have to be paid back, plus interest.

There will obviously be technical problems but technology usually finds ways around such things, padlocked manholes and such. Also by doing this we might end up with a better system of sewers, less effluent escape in to ground water would be a good thing, by putting the cable laying robot into the sewer means you can inspect the sewer as well as lay the cable.

It will be price that will have the final say, especially in other countries that do not have a hangup about bodily functions

This hasn't been mentioned...

[mtec]

...and perhaps it shouldn't be.

But the first thing I thought of when I read the article and saw a picture of the robot was ... terrorists, and how they could use 'em.

Tell me I'm paranoid.

My Paranoia about this.

[t0qer]

A lot can be told from a person from their waste. You can tell what they eat, what kind of health they're in, what kinds of drugs are in their systems and if they're pregnant.

It wouldn't take much to plant small sensors that could detect these things and more. For that matter a microphone could be run up the trap of your sink and you would never know it was there (how often do you take apart the trap?)

As we begin this new age of homeland security and goverment paranoia, I saw something like this coming a long time ago. I bet we're not too far from law enforcement using these types of robots in survelience. To a judge, it shouldn't make any difference if a person goes inside a house and plants a wireless mic, or if a robot climbs up the sewers and does it.

And these things are laying a network medium as they go, no problem reporting back to base what they've found.

Think about that for a moment, then mod me.