When it comes to the supply of fresh water around the world, it's estimated that roughly 20 percent of that fresh water is lost because of leaks within the water distribution systems.

In an effort to address the issue, researchers at MIT have recently developed a new badminton-shaped robot that is able to inspect water and gas pipes and locate leaks within distribution systems.

MIT researchers recently conducted trials with their new robot design in Saudi Arabia and the robot completed every trial successfully; 14 trials in total.

It's alleged that Saudi Arabia sees a loss of about a third of its water supply due to leaks in the system; fueling their interest to sponsor such tests to be conducted. There are many who are interested in finding a solution to this problem.

The researchers at MIT developed a robot that resembles a badminton birdie (see image above) and the robot is able to travel through water distribution systems or gas pipes etc, looking for small leaks. The robot is able to find the leaks by detecting subtle pressures via the sensor on the edge of its skirt-like design.

Improving On Current Methods..

The new design was allegedly able to efficiently detect a leak that was roughly one-tenth the size of the sort of leak that current systems are efficiently able to detect nowadays.

They aren't finished with their tests yet either, now that they have completed trials in Saudi Arabia they will be looking to carry out trials in Monterrey, Mexico. Following Mexico, it's likely that they will test the robot with pipes in Boston.

When it comes to a loss of fresh water supply thanks to problematic pipes, it's an issue that many countries are struggling to deal with.

Saudi Arabia allegedly sees a third of their supply lost, Mexico sees about 40 percent of their supply lost, the UK sees about 20 percent of their supply lost, and in the US there are billions of gallons of treated drinking water that are wasted thanks to problems with leaky pipes and degrading systems.

There are other entrepreneurs out there looking to come up with a solution to this problem as well.

Some firms are looking at drones to help them address the issue, but they've been experimenting with flying the drones over a certain area of a town or community and then collecting data from hundreds of gauges via the drone.

Israel is said to be one of the leading countries in this area of development at the moment, striving to find creative solutions to reduce water loss.

Industry experts say that this is one of the biggest problems facing the world today, there is a tremendous amount of waste going on that might be preventable if the right solution can be found. But upgrading the infrastructure in order to address the problem isn't going to be any cheap endeavor.

banner thanks to @son-of-satire

Pics:
MIT
Pixabay

Sources:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/24/pipeguard-pipe-robot-finds-water-line-leaks/
https://www.pcmag.com/news/355142/this-little-robot-finds-leaks-in-water-gas-pipes
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/water-torture-3300000000-litres-are-lost-every-single-day-through-leakage-2034999.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-water-israel-leaks-idUSTRE5A303X20091104
http://www.npr.org/2014/10/29/359875321/as-infrastructure-crumbles-trillions-of-gallons-of-water-lost
http://www.seametrics.com/blog/water-infrastructure/