Use of a Robot to Clean Drainage Structures

Abstract

There is need for technology intervention in pollution and flood mitigation. This is because people litter everywhere which not only leads to accumulation of waste products that block the drainage systems but also pollution. Furthermore, whenever there is heavy downpour, the storm water tends to overflow onto the roads carrying waste products onto the streets. This has rendered some roads impassable and filled with gross waste products. Maintenance of this drainage structures especially without the CBD environment is little to none. The maintenance is usually done by Nation Youth Service (NYS) trainees and the city council. The process is manual, time consuming and requires a lot of labor. In other parts of the world like India, laborers who clean manholes have ended up dead due to the dangerous drainage structures. The solution is to design a robot that can maintain clean and unclogged drainage systems. Being remotely controlled, it will collect waste products (like plastics, food wrappings), cut them up and store them in an in-built container. The container will then be emptied to a waste disposal site. The expected result is to handle scheduled maintenance of the drainage system in an efficient manner with minimal labour. This in turn reduces risk involved in cleaning potentially dangerous drainage structures. In an effort to maintain the drainages on a regular basis, flooding, which arises from the blocked rains, will be more controlled. Keywords—Blocked Drainages, Flooding, GSM based system, Remote controlled Robots