DETROIT (WXYZ) — As hundreds continue to clean up following the devastating water main break in southwest Detroit, a local tech startup is looking at ways to prevent the next one.
Motmot is located in the Newlab building on the Michigan Central Station campus and is compromised of a handful of engineers.
For the last few years, the team has been working on the Motbot, an underwater AI device that can be used as an inspection tool for municipality water lines.
"So really, this is an inspection tool. We call it an autonomous underwater robot. What we do is we put it directly in a water main pipe and inspect. It has a camera, so it’s able to look at the inside of a pipe. It has acoustics, so it’s able to listen for any leaks," said Elliot Smith, who is the CEO and co-founder of the startup.
Smith says with technology like what his team is developing, he's hopeful cities will see fewer water main breaks.
Related video: Emotion and frustration evident as Detroit water main break cleanup enters second week
"In my past life, I was a municipal engineering consultant. So, I helped represent a lot of cities and counties as their direct engineer. What I noticed is we were planning for all these really big, multimillion-dollar projects with a lot of guesswork," Smith said.
Because of this, the Motbot has been in the works since 2022. The technology is currently being tested in labs at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan. Motmot has also been working with MSU's water works department, which decommissioned 1,000 feet of water main pipe for the device to be tested.
At this stage of the process, the robot moves on its own using the flow of water and propellers. Now the team is working on a second prototype, so the device can make turns.
"This is just a 3D printout and this will be the first time you can start taking a turn in the system," Smith said as he held the prototype in his hands. "So, you totally change the game where you can go from maybe a 5-mile straight inspection to, if you can make that turn, now you’re doing hundreds of miles for an inspection."
Smith says the goal is for cities to have affordable access to monitoring methods before a critical, expensive break happens.
"What our true mission is, it's about public education. It’s about people realizing there’s a whole world underneath our feet that we truly just take for granted," Smith said. "Our systems are old. Our systems are really old. So, we need to make sure we’re taking care of our most critical assets."
Motmot will be officially launching their pilot program in June in East Lansing. They say after that, they’re hopeful to see other cities signing on to try the technology as they've already received plenty of interest.
More information about the technology can be found on the company website.
