
Luigi's job is to gather what we flush so that researchers can learn about our habits and our health
by Cynthia Graber
Newsha Gaeli didn’t come to MIT to study sewage, but on a chilly November morning, she’s staring into an uncovered manhole near campus, watching water churn below her colleague Luigi as Luigi is raised from the sewer by another MIT researcher, Shinkyu Park. Ghaeli and Park occasionally wince as the scent of rotten eggs penetrates their protective masks. “This is worse than anywhere we’ve ever sampled,” Ghaeli says. Luigi doesn’t notice — Luigi is a robot.
On-board sensors tell Luigi — a plastic-encased tubular tangle of wires, batteries, and electronics — when it’s below the waterline, the water temperature, whether the water is flowing, and how much is in the 250-milliliter bottle (about 8.5 fluid ounces) it carries. The bottle is sterile and empty when Luigi is lowered on 60-pound fishing wire the 10 feet or so into the sewage stream. But when Luigi returns, the bottle is filled with a gray-brown liquid, a broth of flushes and drains from neighboring homes and businesses. And it is covered with clumps of an unwanted substance: toilet paper.
Ghaeli grimaces. “There’s a lot of toilet paper here,” she says as she gingerly wipes away the wet muck from the bottom of the robot. Toilet paper is enough of a problem that Ghaeli and Park’s research team, dubbed “Underworlds,” built a fake flowing toilet to help determine which kind of mesh cover would best keep it from gumming up Luigi’s works, but still let in tiny bits of solid fecal matter for useful data. “We’ve designed multiple versions,” says Ghaeli. “The one we have currently works nine times out of ten.”
Read the full story via The Boston Globe
recent
Bill Aulet Named USASBE Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year
MIT Trust Center Announces Entrepreneurship Awards for 2019-20 Academic Year:
Trust Center Founder and Chair Releases New Book on Entrepreneurs
MIT COVID-19 Challenge Part 2 – “Beat the Pandemic”
A New Entrepreneurial Partnership
MIT FinTech Challenge 2020 Addresses Use of AI and Trading Patterns
Trust Center 2019 Academic Year-End Entrepreneurship Awards Announced
Entrepreneurship is more than building cool tech
Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship Expands the MIT delta v Summer Accelerator to New York City and the Cornell Tech Campus
Alumni-founded robotic kitchen cooks up tasty meals
Cambridge, MA 02142