HYDERABAD: In a bid to improve response time and service quality in addressing water pollution, leakages and blockages, the HMWSSB is expanding its use of robotic inspection and fault detection technology.
The board receives 450–500 water pollution complaints daily, particularly from slum areas where ageing pipelines and narrow lanes complicate repairs. While the Annual Maintenance System (AMS) was introduced earlier to streamline maintenance, it struggled to deliver due to technical limitations.
A recent pilot project using robotic technology for pipeline assessment proved successful, prompting the Water Board to scale up the initiative. Advanced robotic systems will now be deployed to inspect pipelines ranging from 70 mm to 900 mm in diameter. These will be supported by an AI-enabled dashboard for data analysis, asset mapping, and fault reporting, operated by an external agency on a hire basis.
HMWSSB’s water distribution network spans thousands of kilometers, managed under 22 O&M divisions and five circles. The agency will handle end-to-end robotic inspection and data management, deploying three specialised teams equipped with non-motorised camera units and robotic crawlers. Each team is expected to inspect three to five sites per day across the city.
The inspections will target leakages, blockages, sediment build-up, illegal connections, and structural issues. Findings will be geo-tagged and documented, with videos, images, and sensor data uploaded to a cloud-based dashboard integrated with the Water Board’s GIS for real-time monitoring and decision-making.
The field setup will include three non-motorised camera systems, three small robots, and one large robot for high-resolution internal inspections, ensuring efficient detection of faults in the underground water infrastructure.