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Innovation: Venom
A robot that climbs into pipes to clean them
By Jacob Cherian
The Venom robot can crawl into oil pipes to clean the wax build-up that
can sometimes reduce oil flow up to 60 per cent.
If Pulkit Gaur had his way, the world would be full of robots. They would clean our homes, keep an eye on the house and even feed the pet. It is no wonder that the boy who grew up dreaming about robots and artificial intelligence finally made a vocation out of it. His company, Gridbots, was started in 2007 at the Centre of Innovation and Incubation at IIM, Ahmedabad, and makes robots for use in defence, surveillance, industrial and home automation, and education. And, to clean the walls of a pipe, as the one in the picture does. Called Venom, it can climb into pipes that carry crude oil from the depths of the earth, and clean the wax that gets deposited along their walls. Just as the arteries of a heart get blocked by cholesterol, a pipe in an oil rig can get blocked by this wax; reducing the flow of oil by 60 per cent. Gaur initially designed the robot to clean the insides of water pipes, but found more potential in oil fields. If only the heart could be cleaned with a solution as simple as this one.
Finer points
Number of robots built: >30
Lowest priced robot: Rs 5,000
Most expensive robot: Rs 20 lakh
Sales
Turtle robots: >4,000
Industrial robots: >100
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