ARE ROBOTS TAKING OUR JOBS NOW!!!!

ARE ROBOTS TAKING OUR JOBS NOW!!!!

A gas mask is the only thing keeping this sewer diver from choking on toxic fumes every day.

One of the deadliest jobs in South Asia is performed by thousands of individuals. It has been someone's responsibility to keep underground sewers free for as long as they have been around. Now, a robot could finally put an end to this unethical activity. Meet the Bandicoot. It can lift more than 250 pounds thanks to its carbon fiber body, four cameras, and four extensible legs. Places that could previously only be reached by human hands are now accessible with a retractable hose and an articulating shovel. Bandicoot is one of a wave of robots tasked with largely invisible city maintenance. This is encouraging because blockages are a problem worldwide, not just in South Asia. Even in some of the wealthiest cities in the global North, pipes are blocked up everywhere.

Why are sewers around the world getting so much worse and what can cities do to prevent drowning in worldwide waste?

A large portion of the world's population depends on an invisible system of pipelines and tunnels to transport their trash. In the present day, gravity is the only factor used in all sewer systems. The inclusion of pumps that can assist sewage flow uphill has been the largest innovation. Cities expand, but their sewage systems cannot. Sir Joseph made a wise decision to double the capacity of the London sewers from the initial plans while they were being constructed in the 1800s. But now that people are flushing things down the toilet that sewers weren't made to handle, including old cooking oil, baby wipes, and other items, the feces is hitting the fan. Cities are routinely impacted by heavy rains and rising sea levels due to changing climatic trends. Sewers may back up onto the streets as a result of all that water, necessitating the expensive construction of larger tunnels.

It is less expensive to locate somebody ready to manually clear clogged pipes in many Indian cities. Despite the fact that this work has been forbidden since 2013. Removing manual scavenging, the creators of Gen Robotics were motivated. According to the corporation, robots like the Bandicoot will actually become less expensive in the long run and eliminate the risk to employees. Although the four co-founders initially made robotic exoskeletons in college, they didn't set out to clean sewers. We believed that technological advancements may greatly reduce human limitations and enable us to perform feats of superhuman strength à la Iron Man. After a fatal sewer accident occurred close to their school, they changed their emphasis. Unfortunately, sanitation employees inside the manhole pass out and anyone who attempted to assist them was unsuccessful.

It wasn't simple transitioning from Iron Man suits to sewer robots, either. The first difficulty was figuring out India's outdated and intricate sewer systems. The manual scavengers worried that this invention would make them obsolete, which was the second issue. Despite the fact that everyone believed this kind of work was inhumane, they were really afraid of losing their jobs since they knew we would design a robotic device to perform them. According to research, health issues cause 80% of Indian sewage employees to pass away before the age of 60.

In addition to engaging some of the scavengers to run the Bandicoot robot, Gen Robotics set out to teach thousands of them about the risks associated with their line of work. With around 300 robots operating now, the company is operational. Bandicoot robots ride on the bed of a truck to the cleanup location. Hard helmets, high visibility vests, gloves, and boots are now worn by crews. The removal of the labels is the only manual step they still perform.

Operators utilize the control panel to descend the "spider" into a manhole after the device is in position. This device functions similarly to a human hand in that it picks up trash, accumulates trash, and then the bucket closes and the trash is carried to the top while the arms help guide it and cameras provide a close-up view for the operator. When conditions are unsafe, sensors that look for harmful gas sound an alarm. Typically, teams of three to five scavengers could only clean two manholes per day while cleaning manually. Only two humans are needed to control the Bendicoot robot. Up to 12 manholes can be cleaned by them.

Mumbai is home to 1.4 billion Indians. There are dozens of enormous cities around the nation, the largest of which is home to almost 22 million people. Each one has different sewers; thus, Gen Robotics constantly modifies its designs so that each Bandicoot is unique. Normally, it takes us four to ten days to assemble one robot and four to ten employees, that is much time to cut, bend, and weld steel pipes. Almost all production steps are carried out internally, and each component must adhere to strict specifications for the city sewer system. The software and design teams tried to keep things straightforward as they recognized the Bandicoot's operators would likely be former manual scavengers with limited education. For this, we collaborated with Google to design a stunning user interface system.

The Bandicoot's operators are likely to be former manual scavengers with less education, therefore the software and design teams made an effort to keep things simple. We collaborated with Google to design a stunning user interface system to accomplish this.

First, there is a growing list of items that people flush down the toilet. A regulation requiring sanitary wipe manufacturers to label their products with a "do not flush" warning was just passed in California in 2021. In the UK lawmakers are pushing a total ban on selling drain clogging plastic wipes. Second, the cost of the major repairs that some locations require is significantly increasing. For instance, the original cost of the London sewer system, when adjusted for inflation, was close to 400 million pounds. Thirdly, a new era of climate change has begun, marked by stronger storms that regularly put sewer capacity to the test. Every time a thunderstorm strikes the city, the storm drains may back up, releasing billions of gallons of untreated sewage into rivers annually and causing potentially fatal flooding.

11 people drowned in 2022 because of heavy rains overtaxing the sewer infrastructure. Therefore, cities will never be able to keep up with their own garbage, no matter what they do. Right under our feet, the Modern Marvel of flush toilets unlocked Pandora's box of issues.