Indore: The future is here. Manholes of Swachh Indore will now be cleaned by robots. After Hyderabad, now Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) is planning to introduce robotic manhole cleaning machine to eliminate human intervention in cleaning of manholes in city.

Corporation officials said that 10 robotic de-silting machines will be deployed in one of wards in city on trial.

“We are in talks with a Kerala-based firm that has developed this robotic machine for cleaning manholes. The agency has proposed to deploy around 10 robotic cleaning machines in city on trial. If found feasible, the initiative would be implemented across city,” IMC commissioner Asheesh Singh told TOI.

He said that though IMC already have super sucker machines for cleaning sewer lines and chambers, sometimes they require manual intervention as these machines are not that equipped to perform the work.

“Deploying these robotic machines can be a helpful solution to do away with manual intervention,” said Singh.

The commissioner said that they are in talks with a private group to fund this project under corporate social responsibility. “We have proposed the firm to bear 90 per cent cost of this project and remaining 10 per cent would be borne by IMC,” he said.

This robotic machine, estimated cost of which is around Rs30lakh, collects, lifts and shifts waste from a manhole, doing away with the need of manual intervention in cleaning of sewer lines and blockages in manholes.

Officials associated with the firm said that this robotic de-silting machine is equipped with four CCTVs to monitor cleaning work.

It comes with two units including a stationary unit attached with a user interface at the top and a robotic device at the bottom that goes inside manhole and performs the cleaning work. “The entire operation can be controlled and monitored from control panel, and the operator does not have to go inside the manhole,” said Rashid K, an official with the firm while speaking to TOI.

“This machine can also detect toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, methane, sulfur dioxide for safety of the operator,” he added.

There are over 1.77 lakh manholes in city that are maintained by IMC.

