{"id":4659,"date":"2023-02-10T09:29:43","date_gmt":"2023-02-10T08:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kingkong-mag.com\/?p=4659"},"modified":"2023-02-17T13:15:03","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T12:15:03","slug":"weekly-10-02-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingkong-mag.com\/en\/weekly-10-02-23\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly \u203b Friday\u00a010.02.23"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nFriday is weekly: a summary of what the team has seen, read, listened to and wants to share with you.\r\n<\/p>\n\n\n

A French robot caterpillar to prevent wasting drinking water<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It is French, has the shape of a cyborg caterpillar and slips into the water mains. No, I am not talking about the latest Stephen King, but about an invention which on its own could hold the key to solving part of the growing problem of the shortage of drinking water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is Acwa Robotics<\/a>, a start-up based in Bastia and Aix-en-Provence, in France, which came up with this great idea, rooted in an extremely worrying observation. In France, between 20 and 40% of the drinking water passing through the distribution networks is lost during transport. That is on average 32 billion cubic metres per year. And this whilst studies are forecasting a global deficit of drinking water in the region of 40% around the year 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a9 ACWA Robotics<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The main problem is the very high cost of water mains diagnostics. The work involved in checking the watertightness and condition of the water mains requires the excavation of the pipes, which, considering the hundreds of thousands of kilometres of infrastructure, is quite simply unaffordable, even for a State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you see it coming? By crawling like a caterpillar inside the water mains, the Acwa Robotics autonomous robot can map all of it without any excavation work being required. With its small diameter of 90 mm, it doesn\u2019t even interrupt the water flow. And its integrated sensors and cameras function perfectly well in these circumstances. In short, a simply immense financial gain is in sight, which will stop in its tracks the wasting of billions of cubic metres of water in France alone \u2026 before perhaps being used all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what if ChatGPT revolutionised video games (as well)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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