Inspecting the interior of water pipes over several kilometres is a technical and major challenge, particularly for operational, environmental and public health aspects. Subsea Tech has developed an autonomous underwater robot, the Torpedo, capable of operating up to 5,000 m in pipes with diameters over 500mm to perform visual and sonar inspections and highlight structural and functional problems.
The system consists of a torpedo-shaped vehicle equipped with batteries that gives it an autonomy of several hours, as well as a motorized winch with a 5000m coil of ultra-resistant cable. The winch not only makes it possible to control the robot’s speed of evolution and to recover it at the end of the mission, but also to measure the distance covered using an odometer and thus to precisely locate the anomalies observed in the pipe.
The device is slightly floating in fresh water and is equipped with skids to stabilize it on the pipe ceiling as it evolves. The very small diameter of the cable (2.1mm) and the hydrodynamic design of the machine allow to cover up to 5000m under optimal conditions.
Torpedo is equipped with a very high sensitivity front HD camera with LED lighting and can also carry a Blueview M900-130 or Oculus 750D imaging sonar (acoustic camera) for inspections in extremely poor visibility conditions as well as an Imagenex 831A profiling sonar to perform ovality controls on pipes. All camera and sensor data is recorded locally and the correlation between the images/data and the distance travelled is made during post-processing.
Torpedo has successfully carried out several inspections in France and abroad, on shelves of up to 4,500m:
– Agglomeration of Thau: sea outfall of 1100mm diameter over a distance of 2 x 2500m (entering each side of the outfall)
– Algeria: 2 drinking water pipes with a diameter of 2000mm by 1600m and a distance of 1100m
– Egypt : Sea outfall with a diameter of 800 mm and a distance of 2100m
– Angola: 1000 mm diameter oil pipeline over 4,500 m
Available for rental (with operator) and sale, Torpedo represents an extremely economical, reliable and robust solution for long-distance inspections in pipelines.
