ABB Robots and the Push to Keep People Out of Sewers

From Seattle's 1918 sewer crews to India's Bandicoot and Madhya Pradesh's pipe-inspection crawlers, and what ABB's IP67 robots and Robot Charger show.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/26/20261 min read

Around 1918, crews in Seattle cleared sand out of the city's north trunk sewer with shovels and a horse and cart. For most of history, checking or cleaning a sewer meant sending a person down a manhole, often with nothing to warn them about toxic gas.

Black and white photo of workers with shovels beside a horse and cart at a sewer trench
Black and white photo of workers with shovels beside a horse and cart at a sewer trench

Workers cleaning the sand catcher of Seattle's north trunk sewer, circa 1918. Photo: Seattle Municipal Archives / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

In many places that still happens. India banned manual scavenging in 2013, yet deaths in sewers and septic tanks are still reported. Kerala's Genrobotics built Bandicoot, a robot that reaches into a manhole with a gripper arm while the worker controls it from the street.

Bronze statue of a worker in a cap lifting a manhole cover from below
Bronze statue of a worker in a cap lifting a manhole cover from below

A street sculpture of a sewer worker climbing out of a manhole, Stockholm. Photo: Mensch01 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Madhya Pradesh has now ordered robotic checks of its water and sewer pipes after sewage got into drinking water in Indore's Bhagirathpura area in December 2025, when several people died. Camera crawlers go in through manholes and valves, work in pipes from 70 mm to 900 mm wide on cables up to about 300 m, and cost ₹40 a metre. The state's GIS mapping had found several lakh spots where water and sewer lines cross or run close together.

Small four-wheeled steel inspection robot with a camera head and cable
Small four-wheeled steel inspection robot with a camera head and cable

A camera crawler used for sewer inspection in Torun, Poland. Photo: Grzegorz Nadolski / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

ABB does not make pipe crawlers, but it builds industrial robots for wet and dirty work. The IRB 1300 in Foundry Plus 2 protection is rated IP67, so it can be hosed down and keep working through dirt and water.

ABB robot arm with Foundry Plus 2 protective cover working in a cell
ABB robot arm with Foundry Plus 2 protective cover working in a cell

An ABB IRB 1300 in Foundry Plus 2 protection, rated IP67. Photo: ABB

ABB's Robot Charger, tested with the Swedish miners Boliden and LKAB, loads explosives into drill holes so people stay out of the most dangerous part of an underground mine. Bandicoot does the same thing for a manhole: the robot goes into the hole and the worker stays at the top.

ABB robot arm on a mining vehicle reaching toward a rock face in a tunnel
ABB robot arm on a mining vehicle reaching toward a rock face in a tunnel

ABB's Robot Charger loading drill holes underground, tested with Boliden and LKAB. Photo: ABB

Once crawlers show where the old pipes are failing, cities will have to replace a lot of them, and steel water mains need welding. ABB's GoFa cobot can be guided along a pipe joint by hand and then weld it. I hope the next decade is the one where nobody has to climb into a sewer to clear a blockage.

Gloved hand guiding a robot welding torch to the base of a steel pipe
Gloved hand guiding a robot welding torch to the base of a steel pipe

An ABB GoFa welding torch being guided by hand to a pipe joint. Photo: ABB

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