Pipe-Bot : I Seek Leaks

In March 2014 what began as a negligible leak in a gas pipeline managed to escalate to a full blown explosion that created eight fatalities in an apartment building in New York City. A leak in a water pipe may not pose a great hazard, but as this explosion that leveled two whole apartments showed, a gas leak is nothing to ignore.

Kamal Youcef- Toumi is a mechanical engineer at MIT who may have the perfect solution to tracing gas leaks before they cause a tragedy. His team has been working on a science experiment to produce an autonomous robot who will be able to do what no sensor in the world is able to do today, patrol the pipes from within.

The Pipe-Bot as it has been nicknamed is a two liter pet bottle sized prototype which floats through the interior of the pipe looking for pressure differences that may indicate a leak. This data is then sent over with GPS coordinates to a technician who can check the section of the pipe physically and make necessary repairs.

This system when implemented commercially will be far more effective in detecting leaks than the existing acoustic sensors that are currently in use to detect leaks from above the ground.