Mission model
Diameter, bends, medium, access, risk, recovery method and allowed duration. No card, no flight.
ROBOT · LINK · DOCK · DATA
Reconnaissance before entry, as a system
From mission setup to human review, every clip is bound to device, time, segment and software version. The MVP is not sold as “full autonomy”. Safe abort and complete evidence come first.
Field failures rarely start at the propeller. They start when a machine can enter but cannot return, when video cannot be aligned, when a gas reading has no sample location, or when a model flag cannot be replayed by a crew. Architecture therefore starts from the mission state machine. PG-Air may later be swapped for a more mature airframe without throwing away dock procedure, data objects or asset interfaces.
Academic reviews of sewer robotics typically list multi-sensor fusion, GNSS-denied localisation and digital-twin hand-off as open problems — not “fly longer”. MIT/CMU and European pipe-robot work is used as industry context, never as our scorecard.
Checks and calibration
Battery, rotors, cage, sensors, clocks, link and log space. Expired gas calibration degrades or cancels the task.
Topside deployment
Exclusion zone, safety officer, manual takeover, tether/backup and evacuation conditions. The dock is a control surface, not a launch pad.
Supervised inspection
Slow advance; mark bends, obstacles and weak links. Task success outranks autonomy. First build: piloted with stability aids.
Abort
Loss of link, gas threshold, structural hit, heat, battery or localisation confidence can stop the run. Recovery is the next act, not “keep exploring”.
Recover and decontaminate
Inspect damage, quarantine anomalies, check chemistry compatibility and battery safety before copying data.
Spatial sync
Video, depth, gas, pose and segment index on one timeline. Unaligned data is reference imagery only.
AI assist + human review
Models rank clips. Qualified people confirm. Algorithm output is not a defect finding.
Report, work order, re-inspect
Keep raw evidence, model version, edits and before/after. Searchable in the asset system, or the mission is incomplete.
IN SCOPE
First verifiable envelope
- Dry, de-energised, non-explosive;
- Target ID ≥600 mm (unvalidated);
- Stable structure, clear access and recovery;
- 30 m straight pipe, bends, controlled obstacles;
- Human supervision and pre-set abort rules.
OUT OF SCOPE
Not in the first promise
- Pressurised gas and explosive atmospheres;
- Fully submerged or strongly corrosive media;
- Long unattended runs or in-pipe battery swap;
- Unvalidated centimetre accuracy or continuous coverage;
- PG-X live fire-suppression or insulation intervention.
Standards: Design and pilots map GB and Hong Kong confined-space codes by scene. Mapping is not certification. Site HSE and qualified persons decide applicability.