Automated launch system for a tunnel inspection robot

• Main Author: Gui, Celine Si Ying
• Other Authors: Seet Gim Lee, Gerald
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Aeronautical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/150500
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

A clean sanitary water system is vital for every country’s continual progress. Singapore has invested and spent considerable amount of effort in its sanitary system – the Deep Tunnel Sewage System (DTSS), which began as early as the 1990s. Serving a current population of close to 6 million, about 595 million cubic metres (m^3) of used water, equivalent to 238,000 Olympic-size swimming pools is treated through Singapore’s treatment system. The ongoing project thus requires constant building and maintenance of the sewage tunnels in order to ensure the system is able to operate smoothly amongst the upgrading, in addition to the growing population. Maintenance of the tunnels can be done both manually and semi-automatedly. However, 53.8% of workers working in sewage systems often develop sub-acute symptoms such as cough and chest tightness. With the health risks posed, many maintenance jobs are thus leaning towards improving the maintenance process to become more automated. A team in NTU has come up with a robotic system to allow the process to become more self-operated. By developing a series of automated inspection techniques and auto-recognition, the efficiency and safety of inspecting the tunnel sewage has largely improved. However, despite these efforts, human intervention is still required in deployments and recovery operations. This is due to the presence of the intermediate platform in the access shaft of a link sewer tunnel. The intermediate platform requires human intervention in manoeuvring the robotic cage away from the intermediate platform. Such process may cause a longer time to be taken when deploying the robotic system. Therefore, this project focuses on a proof of concept that allows the robotic system to bypass the intermediate platform, without the need of human intervention in the access shaft. A prototype concept and design are conceived in providing a solution for the problem face aforementioned, to decrease the amount of time which human intervention is required. An evaluation and analysis of the prototype experiment will then be done to assess on the feasibility of the concept and design proposed.