Friday, January 31, 2025

Robots get smarter to work in sewers

Estonian Research Council

1. sewer 1 TalTech PIPEON — image:
1.-2. Working in sewers presents a myriad of technological challenges. There are currently no robots that can work without direct human intervention and last for a long time in such a featureless, harsh environments.
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Credit: PIPEON, Simon Tait, University of Sheffield & TalTech

The ambitious project PIPEON* will develop new robotic and AI-based technologies for mapping, monitoring, and maintaining Europe’s sewer networks using autonomous “thinking” robots and AI-based modelling and analysis tools.

The development and application of such new technologies would have major societal, environmental and economic impact. Instead of repairing in-sewer defects and removing blockages after streets and homes have been flooded with sewage, defects can be quickly identified and repaired and blockages removed when they are still small. Early, preventative repair and maintenance actions will limit the frequency and volume of sewage spills from sewer overflows into rivers, a key target of the new Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, which has been recently approved by the European Commission.

Lots of challenges

The project leader, Professor Maarja Kruusmaa at TalTech, explained that although repair and cleaning are very practical problems, working in sewer environments means that their solution first requires the achievement of fundamentally new research results. "Robots are mostly used to perform dirty, tedious and dangerous work and are sent to hard-to-reach places instead of people", says Kruusmaa, adding: "but few people have remembered that one of the most complex, dangerous and hard-to-reach environments in the world is right here under our feet when we walk home from work every day". Working in sewers presents a myriad of technological challenges. "There are currently no robots that can work without direct human intervention and last for a long time in such a featureless, harsh environments.” Thus, we need to develop new types of locomotion mechanisms so that robots are able to move even in wastewater, containing solids and fats. New control approaches so that robots can navigate in darkness in pipes with few landmarks, physically restricted by ever changing pipe directions and sizes. Sewer robots need to be smart so that they can survive for days on their own. Underground, there are usually no communication options or GPS signals and there are no precise maps of sewer networks "We will use machine learning algorithms to navigate underground as well as to identify potential defects. But robots are small, and we cannot use unlimited computing power, as is the case, for example, with large language models like ChatGPT. We need to make sure that the robot's own small on-board computer is able to process, learn and decide, and this requires a completely different type of artificial intelligence," Kruusmaa explains.

12 European partners are involved in the project

The project received funding from the highly competitive European Framework Programme on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Kruusmaa commented that "We managed to convince the European Commission that, on the one hand, the project has a very big impact on the environment, the economy and society, and that on the other hand, we are the best team." The team, led by TalTech, is multi-disciplinary and has 12 partners, including the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the University of Sheffield, and several European innovative technology companies, such as an Italian start-up Herobots who are developing novel actuation mechanisms, and also several water utilities.

Simon Tait, Professor of Water Engineering at the University of Sheffield explained that "with over 3M km of sewer in Europe, subject to climate change, new environmental obligations and an aging work force, water utilities need radically new approaches to maintaining their service to citizens’ – we believe that autonomous in-sewer robots is an approach that can help meet these challenges". Our ambition is that by the end of the project we will have evaluated robot prototypes in several European sewer networks, opening the potential for widespread deployment of robots in sewers in the 2030’s.

*PIPEON: Robotics and AI for Sewer Pipe Inspection and Maintenance is a 4 year, €8M, multi-partner, research and development project, funded by the European Union and led by Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech).

1.-2. Working in sewers presents a myriad of technological challenges. There are currently no robots that can work without direct human intervention and last for a long time in such a featureless, harsh environments.

Credit

PIPEON, Simon Tait, University of Sheffield & TalTech

Method of Research

News article

Recycling lithium-ion batteries cuts emissions and strengthens supply chain

Stanford University

Tarpeh LCA battery recycling — image:
Stanford associate professor William Tarpeh and PhD student Samantha Bunke working in the Tarpeh lab.
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Credit: Bill Rivard/Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University

Recycling lithium-ion batteries to recover their critical metals has significantly lower environmental impacts than mining virgin metals, according to a new Stanford University lifecycle analysis published in Nature Communications. On a large scale, recycling could also help relieve the long-term supply insecurity – physically and geopolitically – of critical battery minerals.

Lithium-ion battery recyclers source materials from two main streams: defective scrap material from battery manufacturers, and so-called “dead” batteries, mostly collected from workplaces. The recycling process extracts lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and aluminum from these sources.

The study quantified the environmental footprint of this recycling process, and found it emits less than half the greenhouse gases (GHGs) of conventional mining and refinement of these metals and uses about one-fourth of the water and energy of mining new metals. The environmental benefits are even greater for the scrap stream, which comprised about 90% of the recycled supply studied, coming in at: 19% of the GHG emissions of mining and processing, 12% of the water use, and 11% of the energy use. While it was not specifically measured, reduced energy use also correlates with less air pollutants like soot and sulfur.

“This study tells us that we can design the future of battery recycling to optimize the environmental benefits. We can write the script,” said William Tarpeh (BS ’12), assistant professor of chemical engineering in the School of Engineering and the study’s senior author.

Location, location

Battery recycling’s environmental impacts depend heavily on the processing facility’s location and electricity source.

“A battery recycling plant in regions that rely heavily on electricity generated by burning coal would see a diminished climate advantage,” said Samantha Bunke, a PhD student at Stanford and one of the study’s three lead investigators.

“On the other hand, fresh-water shortages in regions with cleaner electricity are a great concern,” added Bunke.

Most of the study’s data for battery recycling came from Redwood Materials in Nevada — North America’s largest industrial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling facility — which benefits from the western U.S.’s cleaner energy mix, which includes hydropower, geothermal, and solar.

Transportation is also a crucial factor. In the mining and processing of cobalt, for example, 80% of the global supply is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then, 75% of the cobalt supply for batteries travels by road, rail, and sea to China for refining. Meanwhile, most of the global supply of lithium is mined in Australia and Chile. Most of that supply also makes its way to China. The equivalent process for battery recycling is collecting used batteries and scrap, which must then be transported to the recycler.

“We determined that the total transport distance for conventional mining and refining of just the active metals in a battery averages about 35,000 miles (57,000 kilometers). That’s like going around the world one and a half times,” said Michael Machala, PhD ’17, also a lead author of the study.

“Our estimated total transport of used batteries from your cell phone or an EV to a hypothetical refinement facility in California was around 140 miles (225 kilometers),” added Machala, who was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy at the time of research and is now a staff scientist for the Toyota Research Institute. This distance was based on presumed optimal locations for future refining facilities amid ample U.S. recyclable batteries.

Patent advantage

Redwood’s environmental outcomes do not represent the nascent battery recycling industry’s overall environmental performance for recycling used batteries. Conventional pyrometallurgy, a key refining step, is very energy intensive, usually requiring temperatures of more than 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit (1,400 degrees Celsius).

Redwood, however, has patented a process called “reductive calcination,” which requires considerably lower temperatures, does not use fossil fuels, and yields more lithium than conventional methods.

“Other pyrometallurgical processes similar to Redwood’s are emerging in labs that also operate at moderate temperatures and don’t burn fossil fuels,” said the third lead author, Xi Chen, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford during the time of research and now an assistant professor at City University of Hong Kong.

“Every time we spoke about our research, companies would ask us questions and incorporate what we were finding into more efficient practices,” added Chen. “This study can inform the scale-up of battery recycling companies, like the importance of picking good locations for new facilities. California doesn’t have a monopoly on aging lithium-ion batteries from cell phones and EVs.”

Looking ahead

Industrial-scale battery recycling is growing, but not quickly enough, according to senior author Tarpeh.

“We’re forecast to run out of new cobalt, nickel, and lithium in the next decade. We’ll probably just mine lower-grade minerals for a while, but 2050 and the goals we have for that year are not far away,” he said.

While the U.S. now recycles about 50% of available lithium-ion batteries, it has successfully recycled 99% of lead acid batteries for decades. Given that used lithium-ion batteries contain materials with up to 10 times higher economic value, the opportunity is significant, Tarpeh said.

“For a future with a greatly increased supply of used batteries, we need to design and prepare a recycling system today from collection to processing back into new batteries with minimal environmental impact,” he added. “Hopefully, battery manufacturers will consider recyclability more in their future designs, too.”

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-56063-x

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Article Title

Life cycle comparison of industrial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling and mining supply chains

Article Publication Date

24-Jan-2025

COI Statement

Redwood Materials was consulted for primary industrial data but results were analyzed and interpreted by the listed authors. The authors have no competing interests.

ABOLISH PRISONS

Policy briefs present approach for understanding prison violence

Project addresses its scale, sources and consequences

University of California - Irvine

Prison violence remains a significant yet underreported issue in the U.S. criminal justice system, leading to unsafe conditions for both incarcerated persons and staff. To address this pressing problem, a team of researchers has conducted a study aimed at understanding prison violence to develop strategies for reducing and preventing it in correctional facilities nationwide.

The researchers present their work in two recently released policy briefs — “The Dark Figure of Prison Violence: A Multi-Strategy Approach to Uncovering the Prevalence of Prison Violence” and “Sources and Consequences of Prison Violence: Key Findings and Recommendations from the Prison Violence Consortium.”

“Our work aims to shift the paradigm in how prison violence is understood, addressed and, most critically, prevented,” the authors note. “By providing a nuanced, data-driven perspective on this complex issue, we hope to catalyze meaningful changes in policy and practice. The ultimate goal is not just to reduce violence within correctional facilities, but to contribute to a more just, humane and effective criminal justice system overall.”

The work comes from the Prison Violence Consortium, a project made possible by funding from Arnold Ventures. The goal was to conduct a comprehensive review into the nature, causes and effects of prison violence. Led by Nancy Rodriguez, UC Irvine professor of criminology, law and society, the research team includes correctional experts H. Daniel Butler of Iowa State University, Natasha A. Frost of Northeastern University, Melinda Tasca of University of Texas at El Paso and Jillian J. Turanovic of University of Colorado Boulder.

Consortium members include the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry; Colorado Department of Corrections; Massachusetts Department of Corrections; Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction; Oregon Department of Corrections; Pennsylvania Department of Corrections; and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Among their findings:

The vast majority of guilty violent infractions can be attributed to a small minority of incarcerated individuals.
Most violence (71 percent) occurred between incarcerated persons, while 29 percent was directed at staff, according to violent incident reports.
Physical injuries were reported in 42 percent of assaultive or fighting incidents between incarcerated persons and 21 percent of staff assault incidents.
Most interviewed incarcerated persons said violence changed how they “do time,” leading to social withdrawal, hypervigilance, distrust, and vulnerability.
Staff reported frequent threats and physical acts of violence and poor mental health.

The researchers present several recommendations, including:

creating a uniform definition of prison violence,
implementing an “injury” tool to document violence-related injuries, and
using a detailed, dynamic risk assessment to identify high-risk individuals.

Additionally, they recommend providing evidence-based treatment programs, expanding staff training and enhancing mental health resources and support to address prison violence effectively.

Now, as Rodriguez described, the Prison Violence Consortium is expanding to include additional state prison systems and working with existing partners to design state-specific solutions.

“Our work illustrates how independent researchers and government can work in meaningful partnerships to co-develop solutions for complex problems,” Rodriguez explained on Episode 10 of the Pracademically Speaking, a podcast of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ Bureau of Planning, Research & Statistics.

By implementing the Consortium’s recommendations and building on its work, she said, state correctional systems can work toward developing reliable metrics of violence, understanding and addressing institutional mechanisms that hinder accurate violence reporting, and pursuing interventions that will significantly reduce the harm experienced by incarcerated persons and staff.

Method of Research

Observational study

‘Altar tent’ discovery puts Islamic art at the heart of medieval Christianity

University of Cambridge

image:
Dr Federica Gigante examining the fresco in the Church of S. Antonio in Polesine, Ferrara, Italy
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Credit: Federica Gigante

A 13th-century fresco rediscovered in Ferrara, Italy, provides unique evidence of medieval churches using Islamic tents to conceal their high altars. The 700-year-old fresco is thought to be the only surviving image of its kind, offering precious evidence of a little-known Christian practice.

The partially-visible fresco, identified by Cambridge University historian Dr Federica Gigante, almost certainly depicts a real tent, now lost, which the artist may have seen in the same church. The brightly coloured original tent, covered in jewels, could have been a diplomatic gift from a Muslim leader or a trophy seized from the battlefield.

Gigante’s research, published today in The Burlington Magazine, also suggests that a high-profile figure such as Pope Innocent IV – who gifted several precious textiles to the Benedictine convent church of S. Antonio in Polesine, Ferrara, where the fresco was painted – may have given such a tent.

“At first, it seemed unbelievable and just too exciting that this could be an Islamic tent,” said Dr Gigante. “I quickly dismissed the idea and only went back to it years later with more experience and a braver attitude to research. We probably won’t find another such surviving image. I haven’t stopped looking but my guess is that it is fairly unique.”

The fresco provides crucial evidence of a medieval church using Islamic tents in key Christian practices, including mass, the study suggests.

“Islamic textiles were associated with the Holy Land from where pilgrims and crusaders brought back the most precious such Islamic textiles,” Gigante said. “They thought there existed artistic continuity from the time of Christ so their use in a Christian context was more than justified. Christians in medieval Europe admired Islamic art without fully realising it.”

While it is well known that Islamic textiles were present in late medieval European churches, surviving fragments are usually found wrapped around relics or in the burials of important people. Depictions of Islamic textiles survive, in traces, on some church walls in Italy as well as in Italian paintings of the late medieval period. But images of Islamic tents from the Western Islamic world, such as Spain, are extremely rare and this might be the only detailed, full-size depiction to be identified.

The fresco was painted between the late 13th and early 14th centuries to represent a canopy placed over the high altar. The artist transformed the apse into a tent comprising a blue and golden drapery wrapped around the three walls and topped by a double-tier bejewelled conical canopy of the type found throughout the Islamic world.

“The artist put a lot of effort into making the textile appear life-like,” Gigante said.

The background was a blue sky covered in stars and birds, giving the impression of a tent erected out in the open. In the early 15th century, the fresco was partly painted over with scenes from the lives of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. This later fresco has captured the attention of art historians who have overlooked the sections of older fresco. Gigante identified the depiction of Islamic textiles when she visited the church ten years ago but it took further research to prove that the fresco represents an Islamic tent.

Depiction of a real tent used as altar-curtains

Gigante argues that the fresco depicts an Islamic tent which actually existed and that at some point in the 13th century, may even have been physically present in the convent church, providing a direct reference point for the artist.

It is already known that medieval churches used precious textile hangings to conceal the altar from view either permanently, during Mass or for specific liturgical periods. And when studying the fresco, Gigante noticed that it depicts the corner of a veil, painted as if drawn in front of the altar. Gigante, therefore, believes that the real tent was adapted to serve as a ‘tetravela’, altar-curtains.

“If the real tent was only erected in the church on certain occasions, the fresco could have served as a visual reminder of its splendour when it was not in place,” Gigante said. “The interplay between painted and actual textiles can be found throughout Europe and the Islamic world in the late medieval period.”

Gigante’s study notes that the walls of the apse are studded with nails and brackets, and that they could have served as structural supports for a hanging textile.

Gigante points to the fresco’s ‘extraordinarily precise details’ as further evidence that it depicts a real tent. The fabric shown in the fresco features blue eight-pointed star motifs inscribed in roundels, the centre of which was originally picked out in gold leaf, exactly like the golden fabrics used for such precious Islamic tents. A band with pseudo-Arabic inscriptions runs along the edge of both the top and bottom border. The textile also features white contours to emphasise contrasting colours reflecting a trend in 13th-century Andalusi silk design.

The structure, design and colour scheme of the tent closely resemble the few surviving depictions of Andalusi tents, including in the 13th-century manuscript, the Cantigas de Santa Maria. They also match one of the few potential surviving Andalusi tent fragments, the ‘Fermo chasuble’, which is said to have belonged to St Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Gigante also compares the jewels depicted in the fresco with a rare surviving jewelled textile made by Arab craftsmen, the mantle of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily (1095–1154), which was embroidered with gold and applied with pearls, gemstones and cloisonné enamel.

Spoils of war

In the 13th century, it was common for banners and other spoils of war to be displayed around church altars in Europe.

“Tents, especially Islamic royal tents were among the most prized gifts in diplomatic exchanges, the most prominent royal insignia on campsites and the most sought-after spoils on battlefields,” Gigante said.

“Tents made their way into Europe as booty. During anti-Muslim expeditions, it was common to pay mercenaries in textiles and a tent was the ultimate prize. The fresco matches descriptions of royal Islamic tents which were seized during the wars of Christian expansion into al-Andalus in the 13th century.”

Gift from a Pope?

From the 9th century, Popes often donated Tetravela (altar-curtains) to churches and papal records reveal that by 1255, Pope Innocent IV had sent ‘draperies of the finest silk and gold fabrics’ to the convent of S. Antonio in Polesine.

“We can’t be certain but it is possible that a person of high-profile such as Pope Innocent IV gifted the tent,” Gigante says.

An Andalusi tent taken from the campsite of the Almohad caliph Muhammad al-Nāsir was sent to Pope Innocent III after 1212 meaning that there was an Islamic tent in St Peter’s Basilica at some point prior to the painting of the fresco.

Gigante suggests that the tent could also have been part of a diplomatic gift made to the powerful Este family which brokered alliances between the Guelfs and Ghibellins, factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor respectively. The convent was founded in 1249 by Beatrice II d’Este.

“Many people don’t realize how extraordinarily advanced and admired Islamic culture was in the medieval period,” Gigante said.

Last year, Dr Gigante identified the Verona Astrolabe, an eleventh-century Islamic astrolabe bearing both Arabic and Hebrew inscriptions.

Federica Gigante is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of History and the Hanna Kiel Fellow at I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.

Reference

F. Gigante, ‘An Islamic tent in S. Antonio in Polesine, Ferrara’, The Burlington Magazine (2025)

The right-hand wall of the apse in the Church of S. Antonio in Polesine, Ferrara, Italy.

Upper section of the 13th-century fresco showing the tent textile hanging around the walls of the apse, with eight-pointed star motifs and with pseudo-Arabic inscriptions above. Part of the later fresco, added in the 15th century, visible on the right.

Folds of textile with pseudo-Arabic inscriptions in the lower border of the fresco in the Church of S. Antonio in Polesine, Ferrara, Italy.

Dr Federica Gigante in front of the fresco in the Church of S. Antonio in Polesine, Ferrara, Italy