Cleaning of sewers and septic tanks is hazardous and often leads to death by asphyxiation due to poisonous gases. The inhuman practice of manual scavenging had been outlawed in India since 1993, but it continues to persist in some areas due to a lack of proper infrastructure and enforcement of the law.

However, now there is a ray of hope. A team of 11 engineers from Kottayam's Saintgits College of Engineering have created a semi-autonomous sewer cleaning robot that can do eight different actions. The robot, SEWSCAV 22.0, was recently introduced at the college during a brief ceremony and is now being used for internal services on the college grounds.

The project's conception and implementation were overseen by the team's leader,  Harinarayanan Nampoothiri M.G., Assistant Professor in the Robotics and Automation stream. He said that the mechanical engineering department of the college's labs and workshops housed all of the machinery used in machining, fabrication, and mechanical assembly while the automation system synthesis, assembly, micro-controller programming, and testing were done in the robotics lab.

In order to allow mobile phones to control the robot's navigation and scavenging system, the team has also created an indigenous Android application. The robotics team programmed microcontrollers with over 1,400 lines of code, which gives the robot its intelligence.

A more advanced industrial version of the robot is now being designed, allowing for stronger mechanical motions using hydraulics and utilizing Artificial Intelligence and Digital Image Processing technology to make the robot more autonomous.

The development of a robot to perform this task could potentially help to put an end to the practice of manual scavenging, and it is certainly an interesting and innovative idea.