The Robot that reduces the waste of potable water

The Institute of technology of the Massachusetts or even known as MIT, is one of the most important university in the world which is located in the Massachusetts, in the United States. From the MIT comes an excellent graduate student 28 years old: You Wu. The student is famous because he created a really useful robot to mitigate the environmental impact and not only. The robot is able to releave the water losses, this function will avoid the infinite liters of wasted water.

You Wu and the interesting for the environmental sustainability

The name of the young inventor is You Wu, the chinese guy tells that in his country, often the water is been closed to the community for half day, every  week, because of the water conservation.

His personal experience contributed to his interest for the protection of the water suistainability. So, Wu chosen to study thoroughly the environment topics to the MIT, after been transfered in the United States.

The graduated in the institute of technology of the Massachusetts, that now is 28 years old, developed a robot which is able to identify the losses in the water’s conductor.

While the robot moves itself with the water through a tube, it feels the suction forces caused by losses, which means that it studies the pression’s state of the water tubes.

This invention has behind it a hard work, it counts 5 years of implementation to obtain a working prototype. You Wu is been nominated in the 2018 “30 Under 30” for the production and the industry.

You Wu and his college’s friend Tyler Mantel are working to let grow their business. The two young talents just founded a company with the support of Techstars Sustainability Accelerator: WatchTower Robotics.

How the tubes waste the potable water

Many researches estimated that in the 2017, in the United States, there were 240.000 main water interruption during the year, that, as annual basic model, it is like waste more than 2 trillion of liters of potable water every year.

The waste of potable water, which is the treated water, which means not only a losses of a primary assest, but even an economic loss. The treated water go through depuration and pest control’s processes really expensive and advanced.

Waste the water means throw with it even many economic resources. About the 20% of the clean water all over the world is been lost every day, according to the company WatchTower Robotics.

What has the Lighthouse robot of different

Many tracking’s methods of the water losses are already available in the marketplace, but that is focused on the hearing of sounds caused by the tube’s vibrations or on the measuring of the pression’s reduction. Focusing on the acoustic isn’t always an efficient way because in the city there are many sound’s sources.

The robot’s name implemented by You Wu is Lighthouse. Wu said that his robot works in high efficiency conditions both in the cities than in the countryside. The robot is created to check the tubes without stop the water service and it can be inserted in the tubes by hydrants and three way joints.

From here, a complex system of analysis creates a map that indicates to the operators where the losses are. But there is even more, the system adds detailed informations like the holes’ dimesion and which are the probabilities of tubes’ breaking.

Until now, the Wu’s robots are been tested in Saudi Arabia, in Virginia and in the United Kingdom. The company WatchTower Robotics is furthermore making studies and researches in Massachusetts with the water department of Cambridge and in Australia with the society of tracking’s services Detection Services.

“My final purpose is the one to give our robotic instruments in the hands of the engineers in every single city in the world. So every single city will have less losses of water so to support a higher popolation’s growth”

You Wu

This post is also available in: Italiano