February 2025
Street works underpin modern urban life but often manifest in disruptive excavations, lane closures, and significant site operations and labour deployment. A new 'fourth category' is being proposed for the Road to Net Zero (RTNZ) design options framework. This category would use robotics and AI to minimise disruption, complementing the existing three approaches: traditional trenching, minimum dig technologies, and trenchless technologies.
1. Pipebots and Fixbots
- Tiny autonomous in‐pipe robots (e.g., Skatebots, Kangas, Joeys) traverse, and map, a pipe network and use advanced sensing to detect defects – for example, cracking, open or displaced joints, incipient blockage formation – before they escalate or result in failure.
- A research proposal (‘Fixbots’) is currently under review. This aims to create autonomous reconfigurable robots capable of traversing a pipe network, locating a site of concern (as identified by Pipebots) and effecting a repair, thereby providing continuous and indefinite maintenance.
- Pipebots and Fixbots aim to drastically reduce the ~1.5 million annual surface disruptions associated with pipeline refurbishment and repair (see Figure 1 below).
- In a potable water network composed of 50 interconnected pipe segments spanning a total of 120 km, our simulations suggest that deploying 15 pipebots for in-pipe inspections could prevent 22 leaks, thereby avoiding up to 4 days of network downtime and an estimated 8.2 t CO₂e in emissions (see Figure 2 below).
2. Self‐Repairing Cities
- Tiny autonomous surface crawling robots were created to traverse a section of road to detect and map surface cracking and other defects.
- Cracks and other small defects are subsequently filled with fine-grained asphalt (see Figure 3 below), using a 3D-printer mounted on drones or wheeled platforms, to prevent water ingress and halt deterioration. This system was termed ‘Perceive & Patch’. A second drone-based system was devised for streetlight servicing (‘Perch & Repair’).
- If this were carried out overnight (vision, hence daylight or strong night lighting, is not necessary) such targeted, small‐scale interventions would cause hardly any disruption.
3. Robo‐Cones
- Deployed remotely at ~4–6 km/h beside the carriageway, they eliminate the need for workers to place cones in live traffic.
- Makes partial road closures faster to set up and their remotely-controlled removal likewise shortens closure times, reduces congestion, and improves worker safety.
4. Road to Net Zero Optioneering Tool
- This embraces the above innovations and makes transparent the many benefits they offer, including fewer and shorter closures leading, for example, to lower emissions from idling vehicles and other environmental benefits (see Figure 4 below)
- There are also myriad social and economic benefits, including the health and wellbeing of those affected, reduced disruption to local businesses and more reliable journey times.
- Design philosophies include proactive maintenance and precise repairs to lengthen asset lifespans and avoid unnecessary waste.
Over the next decade, these integrated robotic solutions will advance from prototypes toward fully autonomous systems operating beneath, on, and above our roads—transforming street works into safer, cleaner, and far less disruptive processes on the UK’s path to Net Zero.
