The world’s coolest drones survey sewage pipes

Drones have been doing our dirty work for so long that the Smithsonian has a nearly decade-old article about how drones helped rescue Capt. Richard Phillips in 2009.

But there’s a difference between dirty jobs and dirty jobs.

Meet the poop drones

The Public Works Office in Michigan’s Macomb County has embraced the tech to manage its sewer lines, per Wired. 

Rather than sending workers into tight, stinky tunnels to look for damaged pipes, they use Flybotix’s Asio X drone.

• It has a shell-like cage and is equipped with a powerful lighting rig, 4K camera, and lidar to navigate and create 3D models of pipes.
• It collects data that the county sends to SewerAI, where an algorithm can automatically identify defects.
• It’s cheaper, safer, and easier than using human inspectors, and no one has to crawl through a poop-filled tube (we’re assuming the robot is fine with it).

It also looks pretty badass.

The three Ds

As the Smithsonian notes, there are “3 Ds” to drone jobs: dangerous, dull, and dirty.

That basically means any job that humans don’t want to do — like crawling through a toxic tunnel full of sewage, or rescuing Capt. Phillips.

Of course, drones are also becoming increasingly common for deliveries, which either means we need to add a fourth D or accept that food delivery is simply too dangerous for humans.