Mid-December in Iowa is not conducive to catching some rays but it does provide opportunities to work in cornfields that have been recently harvested.

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The goal was to verify that deflection in a recently installed 60 inch pipe was within deflection specifications.The overall project was to install “tiling” in a cornfield whose purpose was to drain excess groundwater from the field and convey it to a collector pipe (the 60 inch pipe previously mentioned) which would ultimately discharge the groundwater into a creek. The tiling consisted of perforated 4 inch corrugated piping, essentially the world’s largest French drain.

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The challenges faced while performing the task included inclement weather, uneven terrain and access to the collector pipe. The temperature ranged from 30 F to -3 F with winds up to 40 MPH so the operating crews had to ensure the equipment (and themselves) was kept adequately warm to avoid freezing. As it worked out, the PipeDream robot performed admirably due to sufficient heat generation to avoid an internal temperature below 32 F which could affect the ability to supply current from the battery power source. The terrain was extremely uneven and consisted of frozen clumps of earth and cow “patties” which made work plodding and susceptible to injury. The access points to the collector pipes were located in 10 foot excavations throughout the field which provided some logistical challenges with regard to setting up and deploying the system. 

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The robotic camera system was fitted with a laser to provide the raw data that was eventually analyzed and a final report was generated to ascertain the amount of pipe deflection/deformation. The robot was attached to a custom amphibious platform which allowed for travel in any potential medium to high flow situation. As it turned out, the flow in the collector pipe was typically below fifteen percent so the float portion of the setup did not come into play. The amount of footage was roughly 21,000 feet which was collected over a period of 6 days. 

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This particular project was our first venture into ovality assessment and produced excellent results. We have since performed several ovality inspections with the PipeDream system in many states including Virginia and Nebraska. It is always the goal of the company to continuously enhance the system capabilities such as live ovality detection and immediate ovality report generation after an inspection run. We look forward to working with our current and future clients to create the next gen camera system and to never stop improving.

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  Straight up, this was the most challenging worksite to date and made me seriously question my career choice. In the end, the fact that the client was extremely happy with the results and that we successfully completed our first ovality job helped assuage me….somewhat.

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- Art Hilliker, Field Operations Manager at Edge AI Solutions, Inc.

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