Water Industry Eyes Robotics, Artificial Intelligence

A former wastewater pro is working to bring robotics and artificial intelligence to an industry that arguably lags on tech adoption.

Tom Ferguson, Imagine H2O’s vice president of programming, spoke to Water Deeply about technology trends in the wastewater industry, including potential solutions in robotics and artificial intelligence.

Imagine H2O is a nonprofit based in San Francisco that helps water entrepreneurs find investors, Water Deeply reported. The company hosts a competition to find the most promising projects. In January, it sifted through a group of 206 applicants to find 13 that it will support with its resources. Winners will take home grants.

Among the finalists: Aquam LLC, which developed an energy-neutral way to address ultra-high-strength wastewater streams.

“Their initial niche is with a specific area of the food and beverage industry. Within wastewater, you’re looking at startup companies who are really good at identifying pain points within the market,” Ferguson said.

“I used to work in wastewater and I know that monitoring tank health is crucial. If your culture in a tank isn’t right, it will throw off your whole treatment process,” he continued.

Ferguson discussed reasons why robotics may be appealing to the water industry.

“Everybody has a membrane system in their water treatment process. And they are looking for intelligent ways to monitor the health of that membrane and, ideally, be able to clean that membrane without having to shut down the system, remove it and clean it off,” he said.

Another company to advance in Imagine H2O’s competition is Pipeguard, which offers a robotics solution for leak detection.

“[The] robot looks a little bit like a shuttlecock from badminton. Essentially, it goes down the pipe with the flow and provides a relatively granular look at pipe condition — regardless of the pipe material. The robot allows water companies to have more visibility into where their leaks are, especially the small leaks. The big leaks are usually self-evident — like when roads blow up. But where are the likely rupture points? We think [the inventor has] got a really novel solution and that there’s an appetite out there from water utilities,” Ferguson said.

The water and wastewater industries are not known for deploying the world’s most cutting edge technologies. David Sedlak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, discussed this issue with City Lab. Sedlak co-authored a paper on what the researchers termed an “innovation deficit in urban water.”

"The water industry by nature is conservative," he said. "It's focused on public health, reliable service, and compliance with regulations. Those three things add up to create a system that's resistant to change."