Explosions caused by leaking gas pipes under city streets have frequently made headlines in recent years, including one that leveled an apartment building in New York this spring. But while the problem of old and failing pipes has garnered much attention, methods for addressing such failing infrastructure have lagged far behind.
Typically, leaks are found using aboveground acoustic sensors, which listen for faint sounds and vibrations caused by leakage, or in-pipe detectors, which sometimes use video cameras to look for signs of pipe breaks. But all such systems are very slow, and can miss small leaks altogether.
Now researchers at MIT and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Saudi Arabia have devised a robotic system that can detect leaks at a rapid pace and with high accuracy by sensing a large pressure change at leak locations. The concept was presented at two recent international conferences, and has been described in several recent papers.
This new...
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