India generates a staggering 1.7 million tonnes of faecal waste a day and 78% of the sewage generated remains untreated and is disposed of in rivers, groundwater or lakes. The two main sources of water contamination are sewage and industrial waste. The volume of wastewater is rising at an alarming rise as the population of India and its industrial landscape keeps increasing at a phenomenal speed. The shrinking of freshwater sources like rivers, wells, and groundwater worsens the situation.The situation is worsened by the shrinking of freshwater sources like rivers, wells, and groundwater. The wastage caused due to 40% of water being lost due to leaking pipes, adds an additional pressure on the limited resource. Lack The lack or absence of reliable maps with urban local bodies makes it difficult to identify the location of the pipe, which can extend the process of digging for pipes.

Non-Revenue Water (NRW) is an issue with almost all water supply utilities in India. It includes physical and commercial losses and free authorised water for which payment is not collected. As per a World Bank report from 2020, the average NRW in India is around 38%, just above the global average range of 30% to 35%. Fluid Robotics has developed an AI-based wastewater surveillance robot for monitoring the health of water and wastewater infrastructure, thus helping cities intercept, divert, treat and significantly reduce chemical pollution. The company’s offerings include a hardware platform for mapping underground pipeline networks and a software platform for managing and analysing data about pipelines, windmills and crops, enabling clients to reduce water pollution.

The robot is tethered and is able tocan move through the pipes to map underground networks, inspect the flow and quality of water, and capture the pipe’s health. The robotic equipment easily reaches difficult and blocked spaces reaches difficult and blocked spaces easily by providing accurate defect data. This technology removes the human component in the dirty and dangerous job of inspecting deep pipelines and also reduces human effort in data interpretation reduces human data interpretation effort. Their systems help to identify structural defects, O&M failure modes, construction features, etc., in water and wastewater pipelines while following stringent international standards. The data gathered and analysed helps prevent water leakages, sanitary sewer overflows and monsoon flooding. It also helps cities to make a data-informed decision to maximize the re-use of water by prevention of breaks and leaks in pipes and minimize water pollution by the identification of the water contaminants at the source itself.

Implementation & Impact

The “Pipeline Mapping & Condition Assessment Platform” – (a robotic system that maps and inspects underground pipelines to survey lines with a minimum diameter of 150mm/6inch) is being used to digitize pipeline data in several cities in India, to clearly understand the impact of structural defects or deposits on pipeline age and capacity. Their first two projects MCGM (Powai Lake and Mithi River rejuvenation) helped them intercept, divert, and treat over 400 MLD of untreated wastewater previously entering water bodies, without the need to buildbuilding new treatment capacity. They have prevented thousands of hours of manual scavenging/hazardous cleaning and identifiedbeen able to prevent thousands of hours of manual scavenging/hazardous cleaning and identify over 20 MLD of water leaks.

In Pune, Fluid Robotics has also deployed its technology for the abatement ofto abate pollution along the 22 km stretch of the River Mula-mutha. Fluid Robotics works with the government and offers solutions through tenders. It also formed strategic partnerships with large private companies in different geographies. They are also scaling to ten cities across the country.

In 2018, Fluid Robotics won the Best Water Instrumentation and Automation’ Automation company at the Water Awards in New Delhi, and was elected as one of India’s Top 25 Impact Ventures by the 7th Action for India (AFI) Forum. It was also named one of India’s top ten innovative start-ups by Socioconnect, an initiative by the US Consulate General Mumbai and BVIC.