Pipe Cleaner

Motivation

Manual scavenging refers to workers climbing into and cleaning human waste from sewer pipes with their bare hands. It is an extremely dehumanizing profession and results in hundreds of deaths every year. Moreover, this issue is inextricably linked to caste: only members of scheduled castes and underserved communities are forced into this profession. To address this problem, I built the Pipe Cleaner, a robot able to navigate and clean sewer pipes of diameter 20-40 cm. I tested it inside a makeshift pipe from a hardened veneer sheet.

Technical Details

The Pipe Cleaner is made of easily available, inexpensive materials including a 3D printed chassis, PVC pipes and aluminium plates for reinforcement. It uses three arms connected by pivots to a central shaft. L-shaped springs exert force on the inner wall of the pipe. This creates traction that prevents the robot from slipping. The pulley operated brush is continuously rotated by a 10 RPM DC motor. The robot is powered by 7.4 V Lithium Polymer Batteries, has an estimated battery life of approximately 3.5 hours and travels at approximately 9.4 cm per second. I used the ESP-3266 WiFi chip to control my this robot wirelessly.

I presented my project to the Municipal Commissioner of BMC. I have also discussed my idea with officials from the sewerage engineering and operations department of BMC. Using their feedback, I am working on an improved iteration which I hope to implement in actual sewer pipes instead of makeshift ones.