March 27, 2009

RedZone Robotics’ Responder robotic platform hailed as ‘ingenious engineering’

DON PROCTER

correspondent

TORONTO

The robotic equipment that discovered faults recently in the Coxwell Avenue Trunk Sewer pipe is a piece of ingenious engineering, say its users.

Called a Responder robotic platform, it is about the size of a small wheelbarrow, weighs a good 1,000 pounds and has capabilities beyond any other equipment of its type, explains Earl Brousseau, senior project manager of D.M. Robichaud Associates Limited, the Oshawa-based firm retained by Toronto Water to do maintenance inspections inside the 1.6-kilometre section of the sewer line.

Made by RedZone Robotics, the hydraulically-powered $850,000 “tank” on tractor treads operates on an 8,500-foot long Kevlar-reinforced fibre-optic leash, which is connected to a monitoring station in a van above grade.

Loaded with an array of information-gathering devices, the robot, which is designed for use in large-diameter lines like Coxwell, actually fits through a manhole cover opening, says Brousseau, noting no other robotic equipment on the market compares to RedZone’s for “one-pass, multi-sensor inspection.”

Lou Di Gironimo, general manager of Toronto Water, says robotic camera technology is not new, but getting an accurate picture at such a deep level (40 metres) was unavailable from the competition.

“For many years we couldn’t get camera equipment down there because no one had cabling technology long enough to run the equipment through such a deep sewer, especially one with such significant flows.”

The functions of the tell-all RedZone robot include:

• sonar to assess information about the pipe below the water or effluent line;

• 3D laser scanning to provide conditions of the pipe above the water;

• constant hydrogen sulphide gas monitoring;

• CCTV (closed circuit television) on a hydraulic mast with zoom, pan and tilt capability;

• pipe meander and incline to provide accurate mapping of old lines like the 50-year-old Coxwell Ave. trunk line

“All of these features come together to provide an accurate structural picture of the line,” says Brousseau, adding the robot has a powerful light to illuminate the pipe’s interior.

Di Gironimo says prior to using D.M. Robichaud, Toronto Water was able to get “floating camera” equipment partly through the sewer to obtain some images of the cracking concrete. But the equipment couldn’t pass through heavy flows.

D.M. Robichaud was retained about two years ago by Toronto Water to inspect 1.5 kilometres of large diameter trunk sewer lines. It discovered the faulty 60-metre section recently. The robot provided very accurate details in the defective section.

The company has exclusive Canadian rights for use of the RedZone Robotic technology. “There are only two of these in the world and we have one,” says Brousseau.

He adds once the work on the Coxwell trunk line is completed, there is no reason for the robotic equipment to sit idle. There are more than 350 kilometres of large-diameter pipeline in Toronto and other Canadian cities have extensive networks of aging sewer lines well-suited to the robotic technology.

RedZone’s patent-pending technology is the latest evolution in robotics from a company founded in the late 1980s by professors at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

RedZone began as a research and development organization which made robots to perform tasks in places like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear plant disaster environments.

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