Summary: Collapsing sewers don’t just cost millions—they swallow homes, disrupt communities, and expose the urgency of fixing underground infrastructure before it’s too late. Thanks to new tech, drone inspections are changing the game. Equipped to handle the grimy, dark, and dangerous underground world, these “poop drones” are inspecting critical pipelines faster, cheaper, and more safely than any human or traditional method could. We’re talking about a practical shift away from reactive chaos toward proactive maintenance. No magic wands. Just logic, tech, and fiscal sense.
The Day the Ground Literally Gave Way
On December 24th, 2016, Fraser, Michigan, had no time to enjoy its holiday. Residents heard bricks popping out of their walls. The cause? A sinkhole, triggered by the collapse of an 11-foot diameter sewer interceptor running 70 feet underground. The fallout wasn’t trivial: homes evacuated, road closures, businesses disrupted, and a $75 million taxpayer burden—excluding indirect costs to the community.
The failed section handled the waste of roughly 800,000 people. When it gave out, the Macomb County Public Works team, led by Vince Astorino, barely stopped raw sewage from spilling into homes. A bypass system was set up in time. Still, it was nine months before things were back to normal—nine months of digging, replacing 4,000 feet of pipe, and cleaning up the mess when early inspection could’ve caught it in time.
Traditional Sewer Inspection: Slow, Risky, and Expensive
Why wasn’t the failure spotted before disaster struck? Because routine sewer inspection is often painfully inefficient. You either send in a tethered crawler with a camera, or worse, someone physically enters these confined, gas-filled tunnels. Both options are risky, time-intensive, and expensive. Worse yet, you might miss defects due to poor visibility or human error during footage review. That’s a losing equation—especially if that miss results in a multi-million dollar failure.
Enter the Poop Drone: Small, Smart, and Unafraid of the Dark
To break that lose-lose cycle, Macomb County took the offensive. In May 2024, they adopted a drone-powered solution—Elios 3 and Asio X, purpose-built to inspect tight, dark pipes where humans can’t safely go. These are no hobbyist toys. One is made by Flyability, the other by its main competitor Flybotix. Both are designed for zero-GPS, low-visibility, and collision-ridden settings.
The Elios 3 comes encased in a protective cage, mounted with a 16,000-lumen LED rig, a 4K camera, and lidar sensors. The enclosure allows it to bounce off pipe walls without damage while mapping the entire structure in real-time. Its key advantage? It builds a 3D model as it navigates, helping inspectors visualize defects with precision.
The Asio X goes further. At 16 inches wide, its twin-rotor design handles unstable tunnel airflows and backing up over flowing wastewater. With 40,000 lumens of lighting and a collision-resistant frame, it delivers 4K footage clear enough for AI analysis. Modestly priced around $100,000, it’s a bargain compared to the $1 million Macomb County used to shell out for triennial inspections, which often missed risks lurking in plain sight.
From Hours to Minutes: What AI Brought to the Table
But hardware alone isn’t the whole story. Pairing these drones with machine-learning software like SewerAI changes the economics, speed, and accuracy of inspections. The AI doesn’t sleep or blink. It scans raw footage and flags defects—fractures, corrosion, intrusion—without the fatigue, assumptions, or oversight that can cloud human judgment.
Where manual review might take months, SewerAI delivers reports in 10 days—often under 24 hours. That kind of turnaround time isn’t a luxury; it’s a safeguard. Early visibility on structural weaknesses stops small cracks from becoming systemic failures. Vince Astorino’s team does more than react—they can now anticipate, prioritize, and intervene with data-driven urgency.
The Payoff: Safety, Savings, and Staying Ahead
While Fraser’s sinkhole was a tragedy, the tech-enabled response to future risks signals a correction. Macomb County became the first in Michigan to marry drone surveillance with AI-powered analysis. This wasn’t a leap of faith—it was a calculated shift rooted in practical economics: spend $100,000 to save $1 million, or more dangerously, to avoid another $75 million emergency.
Astorino’s office runs leaner and smarter, but staying ahead means one thing—constant vigilance. The AI landscape is moving fast, and better detection, longer flight-time drones, or even autonomous missions could become standard soon.
What’s the Bigger Lesson for City Planners and Public Works?
Here’s the truth no one likes talking about: infrastructure isn’t sexy until it fails. And when it fails, it doesn’t ask for forgiveness. It wrecks homes, roads, budgets, and lives. Most counties stick with outdated methods because the alternatives sound futuristic or expensive. But Macomb’s case proves the opposite. Data and drones are not indulgences; they are insurance. Dollar for dollar, pound for pound, they’re the best bet public works teams can place to prevent disasters before they bloom underground.
So here’s a question worth asking: If you knew you could see the next sinkhole coming, would you risk waiting—or start flying drones into pipes today?
Because every crack caught in time is a crisis that never happens. And that’s not innovation—it’s just responsibility backed by smart investment.
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Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Aaron Burden (yFnX8DaC3UM)
