Hyderabad: Robots to clean drains

Hyderabad: Manual cleaning of manholes may soon be a thing of the past with the HMWS&SB planning to design a “robotic instrument” to enter into the manhole and clean it up. This instrument shall move from manhole to manhole by cleaning the sewerage system and removing the silt, solid material in the pipelines, the prime causes for manholes and sewer lines overflowing at times.

The HMWS&SB maintains 2.65 lakh manholes in Greater Hyderabad which are now being Geo tagged and censors are being installed on every manhole to indicate if the cover is left open or if the manhole is overflowing. 

Board managing director M. Dana Kishore has asked technical experts to design the censor chips which will be monitored by the maintenance and operations department.

“Apart from robotic instruments, technical experts will design a special suit in a scientific manner for the manual labour working in manholes and sewer lines to enable them to get the life-saving oxygen. Despite the mini air-tech machines that are being currently used to clean the sewer lines, the length of pipelines that stretches up to miles makes it impossible for them to be cleaned thoroughly. It is equally impossible to clean lakhs of manholes unless of course modern technology is used”, the MD said.

Censors will also be set up to indicate water supply pipeline leakages or polluted and contaminated water with place and location and house number so as to enable the staff to take immediate action. 

This censor indication shall alert the officers sitting even at head-office including the MD so that there is no slip-up in taking immediate action.

The HMWS&SB jurisdiction is around 9,000 km length of the pipeline, supplying filtered water. But sometimes, water gets polluted in the distribution system.  

Now, if the censors signal an issue, then immediate precautionary measures can be possible by the board. The Board is prepared to fix 20,000 censors on the 9000 km pipeline length.