Kerala Engineers Build Manhole Cleaning Robot, Aiming For Safety & Dignity Of Sewage Workers

As many as 102 people lost their lives cleaning sewer lines and manholes in India, as per the first ever government record for 2017. If that wasn't enough, nearly 23,000 men and women die every year doing various kinds of sanitation work. Just last month, four sanitation workers died from inhaling toxic fumes while cleaning a septic tank in Delhi.

It's a shameful and shocking state of affairs. People tasked with doing some of the dirtiest work imaginable get no dignity in return from our society, in life or death.

However, a young startup from South India aims to fix this problem. Their solution to improve the work and life of sanitation workers, and thereby initiating societal change, starts with a robot.

"We were first working on an exoskeleton project, which aimed to give human workers superhuman strength," Vimal Govind, CEO of GenRobotics, tells me over the phone, after highlighting how the startup's full of 30-odd engineers from different backgrounds -- mechanical, instrumentation, computer science, electronic, automation. The young team was inspired by superhuman instruments from 2008's Avatar movie.

Setup in 2015, GenRobotics truly took shape during the college days of its young founders: Arun George, Nikhil NP, Rashid K, and Vimal Govind. Where Vimal acts as the CEO of the robotics startup, the rest of the group serve as co-founders.

"When we were working on the exoskeleton, Kerala government came to know of our work and gave us a problem statement: to solve the issue of manual scavenging."

"At that time we didn't know the seriousness of the manual scavenging issue," continued Vimal. "But after researching on how much risk sewage cleaners take every single day, we decided to stop our exoskeleton project and focused all our attention on building a robot for cleaning manholes and sewers."

Enter Bandicoot

GenRobotics Bandicoot

That pretty much was the beginning of how GenRobotics came to build the Bandicoot. Vimal tells me how in the beginning they wanted to build a robot for both sewage line cleaning and manhole cleaning, but later realized that manhole cleaning actually requires a worker to enter the manhole -- unlike sewage line where manual intervention is very less.

"Manhole cleaning is one of the most challenging and dangerous jobs you can imagine," says Vimal, "where on an average people have to dive into 10 metres of faeces and other hazardous waste matter. And there are even deeper manholes, which sanitation workers dare not go into, because they know they can never come back from it."

This is where Bandicoot comes in. It is a complete replacement of a human being. Designed for cleaning manholes, it has a universal robotic arm -- capable of doing all the tasks a human performs -- and later a collecting bucket where Bandicoot¡¯s arm can dump all the garbage, and it¡¯s retrieved at the top of the manhole for disposing.

Bandicoot can collect up to 20 litres of sewage in 20 seconds flat.

"Bandicoot has machine vision, which relays all the actions of the robot inside the manhole to its operator," says Vimal Govind. "The machine is connected through wire or wirelessly to the central processing unit, and all the human operator has to do is to press OK. It's that simple."

Through a smart user interface, you can see the internal manhole footage along with all the robot actions on a console. The stand unit also has a console with buttons to operate the Bandicoot, once it's dispatched inside the manhole -- the same stand unit is used to pick Bandicoot out of the sewer as well.

GenRobotics Bandicoot

Bandicoot has to be corrosion resistant, water-proof, and flash proof -- meaning it shouldn't give out any accidental electric sparks, because it can lead to explosions caused by methane build-up. It needs custom-built actuators that help it move in the sewer environment. It's a very challenging, and complicated design compared to normal robots, Vimal went on to emphasize.

Deploying more Bandicoots

The cost of a Bandicoot right now starts at 18 lakh -- which includes training and transportation. The cost may seem too high, but remember municipalities around the country are already approaching GenRobotics to mechanize waste collection and disposal. Municipal corporations in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh have already placed orders for Bandicoot. And the robot will be cleaning sewers in Dubai and Sharjah very soon as well.

GenRobotics Bandicoot

GenRobotics recently participated in Google's Launchpad Accelerator India chapter, having secured funding from Unicorn India Ventures and Rajan Anandan, VP & MD, South East Asia and India, Google. Paul Ravindranath G, Program Manager, Google India said, "Launchpad Accelerator India is based on Google¡¯s global Launchpad Accelerator program, dedicated to Indian startups, using ML/AI to solve for India¡¯s needs."

So what's the mission for Bandicoot, I ask Vimal, as they prepare to get honoured and felicitated by the Prime Minister and President at Rashtrapati Bhavan on October 2, 2018 -- Swachh Bharat Day.

"Our aim is to make the job of sanitation workers safer. We want them to use this robot at the initial stage and be able to work in a better environment," he tells me. "This will also ensure better future for the children of sanitation workers -- they will see that their parent isn't risking their life by entering a manhole on a daily basis, but rather standing outside the manhole, operating a robot that does all the dirty work from a safe distance."

Vimal believes that this is how social change will start, and their ultimate hope is that no one's life should be jeopardised in the area of sanitation work.