Joey robots show potential for inspection of narrow underground pipes

Weighing 70g, Joey is said to be the first robot able to navigate by itself through mazes of pipes as narrow as 7.5 cm across. The development by a team of researchers at Leeds University is detailed in Frontiers in Robotics and AI .

In a statement, Dr Netta Cohen, a professor at Leeds University and the final author on the study, said: “Here we present Joey – a new miniature robot – and show that Joeys can explore real pipe networks completely on their own, without even needing a camera to navigate.”

The present work forms part of the ‘Pipebots’ project of the universities of Sheffield, Bristol, Birmingham, and Leeds, in collaboration with UK utility companies and other international academic and industrial partners.

First author Dr Thanh Luan Nguyen, a postdoctoral scientist at Leeds University who developed Joey’s control algorithms, said: “Underground water and sewer networks are some of the least hospitable environments, not only for humans, but also for robots. Sat Nav is not accessible underground. And Joeys are tiny, so have to function with very simple motors, sensors, and computers that take little space, while the small batteries must be able to operate for long enough.”