Robotics R&D Intern at Watchtower Robotics
Watchtower Robotics
Do you know that there are 240K pipe breaks in the US and we lost 20% of clean water due to pipe leaks every year? What's worse, some of the leaks undergound are even too small to be noticed and water just gets wasted mysteriously. Watchtower Robotics is a startup found by a MIT ph.D who has been dedicated to solving the problem by developing a soft robots to detect leaks efficiently and accurately. During operation, the soft robot is inserted from water hydrant. Driven by water pressure, the robot runs through the pipe and comes out through another hydrant. The soft robots have 8 tactile sensors to feel the leaks and to collect data. After processing the collected data, we are able to map the pipes and find the leaks. Compared to the other competitioers, our solution is more efficient and cost-effective, and it can be applied to a variety of pipe sizes and materials.
When I joined Watchtower as robotics R&D intern in summer 2019, all the production processes are done by hands in house. However, the results weren't consistent enough and producing one robot had a lead time of more than one week. The company was adopting new ways to automate some of the production processes to increase production efficiency and reliability. My role at watchtower was three-fold:
- Managed an led a team of 3 to manufacture robots, including making tactile sensors, PCB assembly, mold-casting, and quality control;
- Researched and developed new processes to automate robot production, which reduced overall production time by 50% and increased consistency and reliability of robot components;
- Troubleshot robot issues, identified root causes, came up with solutions, and implemented policies to avoid similar issues in the future.