Review of the State-of-the-art Sewer Monitoring and Maintenance Systems Pune Municipal Corporation - A Case Study

There is an increasing trend of using automated and robotic systems for the tasks that are hazardous or inconvenient and dirty for humans. Sewers maintenance and cleaning is such a task where robots are already being used for inspection of underground pipes for blockages and damage. This paper reviews the existing robotic systems and various platforms and algorithms along with their capabilities and limitations being discussed. A typical mid-size city in a developing country, Pune, India is selected in order to understand the concerns and identify the requirements for developing robotic systems for the same. It is found that major concern of sewers are blockages but there is not enough information on both real-time detection and removal of it with robotic systems. On-board processing with computer vision algorithms has not been efficiently utilized in terms of performance and determinations for real-world implementations of sewer robotic systems. The review highlights the available methodologies that can be utilized in developing sewer inspection and cleaning robotic systems.

A MODEL AND TRAINING METHOD FOR CONTEXT CLASSIFICATION IN CCTV SEWER INSPECTION VIDEO FRAMES

Context. A model and training method for observational context classification in CCTV sewer inspection vide frames was developed and researched. The object of research is the process of detection of temporal-spatial context during CCTV sewer inspections. The subjects of the research are machine learning model and training method for classification analysis of CCTV video sequences under the limited and imbalanced training dataset constraint. Objective. Stated research goal is to develop an efficient context classifier model and training algorithm for CCTV sewer inspection video frames under the constraint of the limited and imbalanced labeled training set. Methods. The four-stage training algorithm of the classifier is proposed. The first stage involves training with soft triplet loss and regularisation component which penalises the network’s binary output code rounding error. The next stage is needed to determine the binary code for each class according to the principles of error-correcting output codes with accounting for intra- and interclass relationship. The resulting reference vector for each class is then used as a sample label for the future training with Joint Binary Cross Entropy Loss. The last machine learning stage is related to decision rule parameter optimization according to the information criteria to determine the boundaries of deviation of binary representation of observations for each class from the corresponding reference vector. A 2D convolutional frame feature extractor combined with the temporal network for inter-frame dependency analysis is considered. Variants with 1D Dilated Regular Convolutional Network, 1D Dilated Causal Convolutional Network, LSTM Network, GRU Network are considered. Model efficiency comparison is made on the basis of micro averaged F1 score calculated on the test dataset. Results. Results obtained on the dataset provided by Ace Pipe Cleaning, Inc confirm the suitability of the model and method for practical use, the resulting accuracy equals 92%. Comparison of the training outcome with the proposed method against the conventional methods indicated a 4% advantage in micro averaged F1 score. Further analysis of the confusion matrix had shown that the most significant increase in accuracy in comparison with the conventional methods is achieved for complex classes which combine both camera orientation and the sewer pipe construction features. Conclusions. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the new models and methods of classification analysis of the temporalspatial context when automating CCTV sewer inspections under imbalanced and limited training dataset conditions. Training results obtained with the proposed method were compared with the results obtained with the conventional method. The proposed method showed 4% advantage in micro averaged F1 score. It had been empirically proven that the use of the regular convolutional temporal network architecture is the most efficient in utilizing inter-frame dependencies. Resulting accuracy is suitable for practical use, as the additional error correction can be made by using the odometer data.

3D Sensors for Sewer Inspection: A Quantitative Review and Analysis

Automating inspection of critical infrastructure such as sewer systems will help utilities optimize maintenance and replacement schedules. The current inspection process consists of manual reviews of video as an operator controls a sewer inspection vehicle remotely. The process is slow, labor-intensive, and expensive and presents a huge potential for automation. With this work, we address a central component of the next generation of robotic inspection of sewers, namely the choice of 3D sensing technology. We investigate three prominent techniques for 3D vision: passive stereo, active stereo, and time-of-flight (ToF). The Realsense D435 camera is chosen as the representative of the first two techniques wheres the PMD CamBoard pico flexx represents ToF. The 3D reconstruction performance of the sensors is assessed in both a laboratory setup and in an outdoor above-ground setup. The acquired point clouds from the sensors are compared with reference 3D models using the cloud-to-mesh metric. The reconstruction performance of the sensors is tested with respect to different illuminance levels and different levels of water in the pipes. The results of the tests show that the ToF-based point cloud from the pico flexx is superior to the output of the active and passive stereo cameras.

Learning and SLAM Based Decision Support Platform for Sewer Inspection

Routine maintenance of drainage systems, including structure inspection and dredging, plays an essential role in disaster prevention and reduction. Autonomous systems have been explored to assist in pipeline inspection due to safety issues in unknown underground environments. Most of the existing systems merely rely on video records for visual examination since sensors such as a laser scanner or sonar are costly, and the data processing requires expertise. This study developed a compact platform for sewer inspection, which consisted of low-cost components such as infrared and depth cameras with a g-sensor. Except for visual inspection, the platform not only identifies internal faults and obstacles but also evaluates their geometric information, geo-locations, and the block ratio of a pipeline in an automated fashion. As the platform moving, the g-sensor reflects the pipeline flatness, while an integrated simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) strategy reconstructs the 3D map of the pipeline conditions simultaneously. In the light of the experimental results, the reconstructed moving trajectory achieved a relative accuracy of 0.016 m when no additional control points deployed along the inspecting path. The geometric information of observed defects accomplishes an accuracy of 0.9 cm in length and width estimation and an accuracy of 1.1% in block ratio evaluation, showing promising results for practical sewer inspection. Moreover, the labeled deficiencies directly increase the automation level of documenting irregularity and facilitate the understanding of pipeline conditions for management and maintenance.