Water pipe leakage is a common and significant problem around the world. In recent years, an increasing amount of effort has been put into developing effective leak detection solutions for water pipes. Among them, the pressure gradient based method developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology excels for its sensitivity in low pressure, small diameter pipes. It can also work in both plastic and metallic pipes carrying gas or water. However, the method was only verified in static fluid pipes, and the previous sensor designs were unable to detect leaks when there is a significant water flow in the pipe. This is undesired as the inspection can only be performed when water service is shut down. A modeling analysis shows that fluid dynamic effects in the water pipe make the original sensors dynamics too slow to react to leaks. Moreover, this leak detection method is prone to false alarms such as obstacles in the pipes, but there is a lack of studies on this topic. In this paper, we present three things: the design of a new leak sensor that is fast enough to detect leaks in dynamic fluid environments, a prototype for 52mm-inner-diameter pipeline tested in an industrial facility, and a method to differentiate leaks from false alarms supported by the test results.

Autonomous underwater robots provide opportunities to perform missions in confined environments such as water pipe networks. They can carry sensors in these pipes and perform tasks such as mapping and inspection. Those robots must have a high level of maneuverability in order to navigate through complex networks of pipes with irregularities due to rust and calcite deposition. We propose a fully integrated, untethered robot capable of carrying sensors and maneuver into water pipe networks. The objective of this paper is to present (i) the optimal shape design and (ii) a propulsion system selection and sizing procedure for such robots. A prototype is built to demonstrate the basic elements of maneuverability, including following straight lines and making sharp turns.

In this work we present a new in-pipe leak detection robot, the MIT Leak Detector. The system performs autonomous leak detection in gas pipes in a reliable and robust fashion. Detection in based on the presence of a pressure gradient in the neighborhood of the leak. As the MIT Leak Detector travels through pipes, it picks up the pressure gradient in case of leaks via a carefully designed detector. In this work we demonstrate the performance of the system in a lab setup, which consists of 100mm ID pipes containing pressurized air.