Semi-automated sewage congestion detection and removal system in a simulated pipe set-up

The MMDA and LGUs perform manual labor in order to clean and maintain sewers in the Metro, but comes at a great cost in budget and in health. The main purpose of this study is to develop an automated sewage congestion detection and removal system and implement it using a physically simulated pipe and manhole setup. The means for clog detection would be a CMOS camera placed in a box with a light source, all of which are situated facing the glass panel outside the manhole setup. This set-up takes images and processes them using the concepts of thresholding, quadtree decomposition and morphological operations via MATLAB. The PIC microcontroller (PIC16f877A) is used for control and synchronization purposes between the image processing program and the hardware modules for declogging. The implementation of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) using MATLAB allowed the user to view the automated process correctly and to check the functions of each of the entire system using the Manual and PIC Mode. Finally, the submersible pump is employed for removing the sludge inside the manhole setup. At the end, significant portions of the choke, which is composed of sand, soil, fats, oils, greases and foliage, were removed by the group after subjecting the whole mechanism and control into several tests. To end with, a paper design was also prepared by the group regarding the actual setting in real life scenario of the simulated setup