Adding Dignity to the Life of Sanitation Workers
Sanitation workers across the nation are working on the frontlines during the pandemic. These workers, mainly the manual scavengers, are highly exposed to all kinds of domestic and hazardous waste. Manual scavenging, also called manhole cleaning is one of the biggest problems in India and one of the worst professions in the world. The working and living conditions of these scavengers are horrific, with dire consequences on their health and livelihood.
There are about 1.8 lakh people in the country working as manual scavengers. Most of them die from inhaling poisonous gases accumulated inside manholes, oxygen depletion, heat stress or from falling down the pit. About four or five people die on the job every month, shockingly most of the manual scavengers don’t live beyond the age of 30 — a major reason being a lack of proper technological solutions to take their place. They are not provided the mandatory safety gear by their employers, which often results in fatal accidents. Even a protective cap is a luxury for a manual scavenger. Manual scavenging is outlawed in India and two laws have been enacted. The Employment of Manual Scavenging and Construction of Dry Latrines Prohibition Act, 1993 and the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 eradicate the practice of manually cleaning, carrying and disposing human excreta and garbage from sewers. Yet, thousands of people are still engaged in the work facing social oppression and extreme exclusion from the society.
To end this ‘dehumanising practice’, a group of engineers from Kerala have found a way. They have designed a spider-shaped robot called Bandicoot to clean manholes and sewers with precision. Bandicoot has been developed by Genrobotics, a Thiruvananthapuram-based startup. Genrobotics’ founders Vimal Govind MK, Arun George, Nikhil NP, and Rashid Bin Abdulla Khan graduated from MES College of Engineering in Kuttipuram, Kerala, and started working in different corporate jobs. However, the jobs did not satisfy their internal urge to bring about real change through innovation. Eventually, they quit their jobs and dusted out Genrobotics, which they had started as a student startup in 2015 while in college but had been pushed to the back burner once they had all begun working.
This idea came to their minds while they were working on a project and a manhole accident took place in Kerala. Three people lost their lives, including the person who tried to help the two sanitation workers. The Genrobotics team realised that there was no technological solution to mitigate manual scavenging. That’s when they took up the mission to develop a robotic technology to eliminate human intervention for manhole cleaning with human level flexibility.
The idea was to build on a powered exoskeleton they had developed in the final year of college and which had won them many accolades. A powered exoskeleton is a wearable mobile machine that allows limb movement with increased strength and endurance. Such machines are used by soldiers to carry heavy objects and by firefighters during emergency operations.
In 2017, the company developed the first version of the robot. GenRobotics’ innovation cleans manholes remotely using robotic arms and computer vision. It uses pneumatic and electric actuators, infrared cameras, sensors and Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites (CFRP). This robot can do all the work that a man does inside the manhole. The innovation is remotely operated and can clean up to ten manholes a day. It is engineered for cleaning any type of sewer manholes. It can clean wastes like hard rocks, sand, silt, sludge, non-biodegradable wastes, etc. The key features of the machine include four advanced sewer cameras.
Young engineers behind Bandicoot created by their startup, Genrobotics Left: Bandicoot at work
Bandicoot has two major structures. One is the robotic unit with an arm and four legs that enters the manhole and handles the cleaning operation. The other is a control panel unit that stays outside the manhole. An operator is required to control or monitor Bandicoot. The operator can control the robotic unit by monitoring through a high-definition display which will get input from IP68 waterproof cameras mounted on the drone unit. The stand unit also has a second display on the user interface area for various other interactions such as checking the quantity of poisonous gas inside the manhole and training assistance for better user experience and easy rehabilitation of sanitation workers.
The sensor-based feedback system assimilated in the robot allows the operator to know the position of the drone unit inside the manhole. These sensors also help Bandicoot in measuring different environmental parameters like manhole dimensions, material and chemicals present in the manhole, humidity, and temperature.
Surgical cleaning processes with high efficiency can be done with the help of the machine. The drone unit basically dives into the manholes for the cleaning operations or unblocking operations. The diving depth of the robotic drone is customisable according to the maximum depth needed. The robotic arm of the drone has four degrees of freedom and 360-degree movement capacity to perform grabbing, shovelling and unblocking actions inside the manholes. The stability of the machine is ensured with four expandable legs. The collected waste is taken out with the help of an integrated waste-collecting bucket system with a capacity of 18 litres. The robotic unit also has a fixed, waterproof, night-vision camera. This camera transmits 4K resolution videos and images in real time, even if the manhole is full of water.
The cleaning process can be done in two modes: automatic or semi-automatic. Automatic cleaning is applied to the standard manholes. Based on artificial intelligence (AI) programs, the robotic unit moves inside the manhole by itself and cleans on its own. For non-standard manholes, the semi-automatic control is brought into play.
Nano coating in addition to the powder coating surface treatment process enables the robot to perform its operation in any hazardous or corrosive sewerage environment effectively for a longer period.
The Bandicoot has the flexibility to perform more efficient cleaning than humans. Manual scavengers will not lose their jobs as they are being rehabilitated to become robot operators and be employed in the high technology sector. The robot takes 15 minutes to clean small sewers and around 45 minutes to unclog bigger ones.
Besides Kerala, Bandicoot is successfully serving in different states of India including Haryana, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Telangana, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. The innovation has been successfully deployed by Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), Surat Municipal Corporation, Dhule Municipal Corporation, Muktsar Sahib Municipal Council in Punjab, Thanjavur Municipal Corporation, Coimbatore Municipal Corporation, among several others. More than 200 sanitation workers have been trained to be robot operators and thousands of sanitation workers have undergone their rehabilitation programme. In addition to that, the innovators of Bandicoot have signed an MoU with the Dubai municipality to robotise their sanitation sector.
