When Asim Bhalerao visited his parents in Mumbai in 2014, he saw a notice stuck on the notice board of the building which he had rarely seen before. The notice read, ‘No Water from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm”. Though the inconvenience seemed minor at the time, when he visited his parents six months later, he found that the problem had not been fixed.
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Once he talked to the Chief Engineer with the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC), he found out that BMC and the maintenance team of the society had been trying to find a leak in a 2 km long pipeline. But, to no avail.
Asim was curious and asked the Chief Engineer about the method of detecting the leak. He came to know that they were using an outdated technology to detect the leak.
“Due to unreliable or sometimes non-existent maps from the municipal corporation, they had to rely on local knowledge to identify the location of the pipe, sometimes digging around for weeks. Once they’d reach the pipe surface, they used an age-old technique with sounding rods that helped them understand if the pipe was ‘good’ or ‘bad’,” informs Asim.
When Asim went back to the US, he discussed the problem with his wife, Nidhi Jain. During the discussion, bigger issues pertaining to water management and drainage systems also came up. This became a bigger motivation to found, Fluid Robotics, and move to India in early 2016.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) in February this year estimated that almost 60 percent of sewage generated by urban India remains untreated. In addition, this untreated sewage enters water bodies like lakes and rivers which not only has a negative environmental impact but also makes the water unfit for use.
One of the companies mitigating this problem is Fluid Robotics, a start-up which provides products and services to enable better management of water and wastewater infrastructure. The company is achieving its goal with the help of robotics and information, helping cities minimise pollution caused by untreated wastewater entering rivers, lakes and groundwater.
“When we learnt the extent of the problem in India, we also found that there was no company developing technologies to solve these problems. We initially conducted pilot projects in India while still living in the US. We quickly learnt that we needed to be in India to truly understand the problems and challenges with working in the government sector,” says Asim.
How do they provide solutions?
The company’s robotic system is one of the prime products that helps in mapping and inspecting underground pipelines. The system digitises the data collected on pipelines which helps in identifying structural defects, operations and maintenance failure modes among others.
“We believe minimising water loss and maximising water reuse can be achieved first and foremost by effectively managing the infrastructure of the pipelines. This requires mapping a majority of the underground pipeline infrastructure and identifying their health based on faults present in them. The rate at which this needs to happen in India is unlike anywhere else in the world,” says Asim.
For the purpose of mapping buildings, slums, pipelines, roads, villages and others, the company uses drones. These maps help in understanding the topography and hydraulics of the region. These are also helpful in locating stormwater outfalls which carry untreated wastewater into lakes and rivers. They also have sensors that accurately measure the flow of wastewater in the storm water drains.
“We use AI and robotics to automate pipeline mapping and health assessment. We also use drones and AI for crop pattern analysis, identifying different crops and water sources for effective farm management,” shares Nidhi.
Trained professionals and qualified survey staff inspect pipelines and prepare detailed reports.
Fluid Robotics has worked on several projects. One of the many infrastructural projects they worked on is Powai and Mithi river Rejuvenation. Here, they worked with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and found solutions through Robotics and Data analytics.
Rupesh Gundewar, 42, Principal Consultant at Frischmann Prabhu India, said that working with Fluid Robotics helped them in the Powai and Mithi River Rejuvenation projects. As an engineering consultant firm, they had to come up with solutions and for that they needed drone surveys of the topography of the area.
“The plans that the MCGM had were old. We needed drone surveys because we wanted to map the storm water drains in the area and identify where the leakages are,” he says. They built their engineering solutions based on the data collected from these surveys.
“We identified the source of polluting outfalls to be residential and commercial areas near these lakes. We also used their robots which ventured into the drains to look for blockages,” he informs.