The University of Leeds promise to create robots that will be able to maintain and restore urban infrastructure

Welcome to the pages of the blog iCover ! Today in our news section news from Albion, where possible in the foreseeable future robots and drones take over control of the state and the small current repair of urban infrastructure. In any case, it is the goal of the ambitious project "self-healing" city of the future, which is working on the implementation of a team from the University of Leeds.





Support for urban infrastructure with proper care requires employees of municipalities serious financial and time costs. Such works include cracks in the walls of buildings, deformation of the surface of sidewalks, replacement of blown bulbs, marking and repair of pavement and many similar.

Real chance once and for all get rid of the routine manual work and the associated direct and indirect costs in the next few years may see the municipality Leeds, thanks to a new program implemented by a team of the University City. In accordance with the plans of the group of experts most of the labor-intensive work will carry out robots and unmanned aerial vehicles. The task will be to enter drones monitoring the condition of the urban infrastructure from the air. If you find fault the team at their elimination fed robot that will arrive at the place of work immediately after the "call" and to eliminate the revealed defects.

The project is funded by the Research Council of Engineering and Physical Sciences (EPSRC). The total amount of the fund's investments in research and development of advanced technologies - 21 million pounds. Of these, the project priority has been allocated 4, 2 million pounds. If provided by the scheme would be viable, the next stage in the development, according to scientists, can become a global program t. N. "Self-healing city" in which routine work on the reconstruction of infrastructure will perform robots and drones.

It is very important that the creation of "units" robot systems that can perform maintenance tasks bottlenecks, together with monitoring of UAVs allows fix problems at the stage of their occurrence. In the long term, this approach will greatly reduce the potential costs in comparison with those incurred by the city budget, eliminating the problems that grew over the years. And it is equally important that the people of the cities will be spared from having to put up with the temporary inconvenience associated with the work.

University of Leeds Professor Phil Purnell (Phil Purnell), who heads the research group, shares his vision for the future: "Leeds will be the first city in the world where there will be large-scale repair work, disrupts the normal rhythm of city life." In the foreseeable future we will give our infrastructure to a state where for her integrity and functionality of the robots will follow. This is the time when the familiar signs of the "road" and "reconstruction" work will become a relic of the past ".

The program includes three separate areas, each of which will be devoted to the development of robots-repairers particular specialization. Experts believe that in the near future they will be able to create drones that can not only detect the burned lamps and street lamps broken glass, but also to carry out their replacement. Another area will be devoted to the creation of unmanned monitors the state of road surfaces and robots that will address the identified deficiencies. Under the third part of the program is to develop a robot, whose mission - to timely detection and troubleshooting, continuous health monitoring of underground engineering communications and the transfer of "reports" on assignments.

Create a similar robot, according to the developers it will allow the use of already existing developments in related areas of knowledge and robotics, as well as intellectual and technical potential, which has a University of Leeds and its partners involved in the project. The team included representatives from various areas of expertise from other leading universities in the UK - Birmingham, Southampton and UCL, Nottingham, Sheffield, Oxford and others.

The first prototypes of the robots-repairers within the framework of financing and according to the plans themselves engineers should appear in the next year. The moment of truth will be the results of tests carried out in real conditions.

With the publication of the original if you want you can read на Online University .

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