Artificial intelligence being used to inspect sewer pipes INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A company is using artificial intelligence (A.I.) to inspect sewer systems in a more efficient way. SewerAI told I-Team 8 their system helps utility companies more quickly identify when pipes need to be repaired or replaced, which has the potential to save utility customers money. “Every day throughout our country operators are going out into the field and we’re sending robots into sewer pipes, storm water pipes to collect video and inspect the condition of those pipes,” said Eric Sullivan, a spokesperson for SewerAI. Those crews collect hours and hours of video. With someone having to watch all of it that process can be time consuming. “Operators have to manually type in every single thing they see in the sewer pipe as they’re driving a robot,” Sullivan says. The A.I. system the company has does that for the operators running the robot. “Automatically detect the conditions in the CCTV (closed-circuit television) inspection videos,” Sullivan says. This shortens the amount of time it takes to find problems in the sewer system. “In the field, the operators can collect data sometimes twice as fast, but also enable the workforce to be effective without a level of expertise that was really hard to get and very expensive,” Sullivan says. By offloading the watching of sewer video to A.I., the focus can shift to fixing the problems the A.I. finds. “We’re making the cost of inspection, we’re lowering it, but making the data itself that these engineers need to make critical decisions more accurate and more consistent,” Sullivan says. ...read more read less