RI Seminar: Dr. Yicheng Yu

Title : Pipebots: pervasive sensing for buried pipes

Dr. Yicheng Yu

University of Sheffield

Bio: Dr. Yicheng Yu holds a Msc on vibro-acoustics from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a PhD on architectural-acoustics from University of Liverpool. He joined University of Sheffield as a research associate in 2019 working on acoustic sensing systems deployed on autonomous robots for condition detection in pipelines.

Abstract: The replacement value of UK buried water and wastewater pipes, a network with a length of approximately 1m km, is between £300B and £600B. Similar figures can be assigned to the gas supply network. While pipe inspection technologies used by these industries have progressed, the lack of comprehensive knowledge about the condition of buried pipes results in sporadic, unforeseen failures. Pipebots project is developing an intelligent, robust and resilient buried pipe system that moves us towards failure free operation and so ends unnecessary & unplanned road excavation.

This talk mainly focuses on two topics: 

1) development of a new science of sensing for high fidelity in-pipe inspection particularly sonic sensing; 
2) the integration of this new science with robotic, navigation and communication solutions to work autonomously in large buried infrastructure networks.

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