On 16 January 2017, a pipe layer in Key Largo, Florida, climbed into a manhole and collapsed. A co-worker went in after him and collapsed too. Then a third. All three died from hydrogen sulphide and carbon monoxide.
How Cities Worldwide Are Taking Workers Out of Manholes
On 16 January 2017, a pipe layer in Key Largo, Florida, climbed into a manhole and collapsed. A co-worker went in after him and collapsed too. Then a third. All three died from hydrogen sulphide and carbon monoxide.
It could have been Delhi, Chennai or any city in the world with a sewer. The gas is the same everywhere, and so is the instinct to go down after a fallen colleague.
That's why cities on every continent are working toward the same goal: no human entry. They're getting there in different ways and at different speeds. This is a look at how the world is moving from people to sewer cleaning robots, and where India's own Bandicoot fits in that global picture.
The problem every city shares
A sewer doesn't care which country it's in. Waste rots, gases build up, oxygen drops and a confined shaft becomes a trap. A worker can lose consciousness in seconds.
The infrastructure has a lot in common across the world too. Many networks are decades old. Blockages from fat, grease, textiles and silt are constant. Manholes are narrow, deep and often in crowded streets.
What differs is who goes down. In 2019 the World Bank, ILO, WaterAid and WHO studied sanitation workers in nine countries, including India, Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa and Haiti. They found protection for these workers was "ad hoc and fragmented." In wealthier cities, the worker is usually a trained utility employee with gas monitors and a rescue tripod. In fast-growing cities, it's often a contract labourer with a rope.
The direction of travel is the same everywhere: get the human out of the hole.
Four ways cities take workers out of manholes
Across the world, cities use four layers of protection. Each one removes a little more risk.
- Rules. Confined-space laws require permits, gas testing, ventilation and rescue plans before anyone enters. They reduce deaths but still put a person in the shaft.
- Trucks. A sewer jetting machine blasts blockages loose with high-pressure water, and suction trucks pull the waste out. They work well on wide roads and long pipes, less well in narrow lanes and deep, packed manholes.
- Cameras and crawlers. A sewer inspection robot carries a camera through the pipe so engineers can see cracks and blockages without going in. This is now standard practice in many developed cities.
- Robots that clean. The newest layer is robotic sewer cleaning: machines that don't just look, but grab, scoop and remove waste from the manhole itself. This is the step that finally makes human entry unnecessary.
Most cities have the first three. Very few have the fourth at scale. That gap is where the next decade of sewer robotics will be decided.
How different regions are tackling it
United States: strong rules, but people still go in
American utilities work under strict permit-required confined space rules from OSHA. Jetting trucks and CCTV crawlers are common. Yet workers still enter manholes to clear blockages, fix equipment or retrieve tools, and fatal incidents like Key Largo still happen.
In the Key Largo case, OSHA found the employer hadn't ventilated the space, tested the air with a calibrated device, issued an entry permit or provided rescue equipment. "The hazards of working in manholes are well established," said OSHA's area director at the time. Rules only protect workers when every step is followed, every time.
Europe: millions of kilometres of pipe, inspected mostly by eye
Europe has an estimated 3.2 million kilometres of sewers. According to the EU-funded PIPEON project, most of that network is still inspected by people reviewing CCTV footage, so the condition of much of it is unknown.
PIPEON is a €8 million Horizon Europe programme running from 2025 to 2028. It's developing robots that can inspect pipes on their own, install flow monitors and clear blockages of textiles, fat and grease. Its partners include universities and municipalities in Norway, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Hungary and Estonia. The project expects automated inspection to cut costs at least tenfold and reduce sewage spills into rivers by about 30%.
Europe's lesson: even the richest networks haven't solved robotic sewer maintenance. They're still building it.
Hong Kong: robot dogs for confined spaces
Hong Kong's Electrical and Mechanical Services Department has catalogued a quadruped confined space inspector: a robot fitted with a four-in-one gas detector, a thermal camera, a zoom camera and LiDAR. It has been tested at sewage treatment works and an underground stormwater storage facility, so that workers can see the conditions inside before anyone enters.
It's a strong inspection tool. Like most robots in this space, it looks and measures. It doesn't clean.
Singapore: a world-class utility turns to robots
Singapore’s national water agency, PUB, runs one of the most advanced water systems in the world. In March 2026 it selected Genrobotics to bring robotic inspection and cleaning into its sewer and water network, with real-time monitoring of the work. The selection focused on engineering capability, operational performance and reliability in harsh conditions.
For a city-state that can buy technology from anywhere, the choice says a lot about where practical robotic sewer solutions are being built.
Malaysia and beyond: horizontal spaces and new markets
In Malaysia, the national sewerage company Indah Water uses Genrobotics' Wilboar, a tracked rover that cleans sewer wells and sewage treatment plant wells without anyone entering them.
Genrobotics also reports clients in South Korea and expansion into the UAE and South Africa. The pattern is clear: once one city proves a sewer robot works, its neighbours follow.
India: the largest real-world test of manhole robots
India has the hardest version of the problem and, as a result, the largest deployment of manhole cleaning robots anywhere. The Supreme Court has ordered manual sewer cleaning phased out. The NAMASTE Scheme pushes cities toward mechanised sanitation. Swachh Bharat Mission, AMRUT and the Smart Cities Mission fund the equipment.
Bandicoot India deployments now run across 19 states and 3 Union Territories, in more than 120 cities. Gujarat, Coimbatore, Indore, Kolkata's New Town and dozens of municipal corporations use Bandicoot robots for routine manhole cleaning. India isn't waiting for perfect conditions. It's deploying in the real ones.
What the global comparison shows
Line the regions up and one pattern stands out. The world has largely solved sewer inspection. It hasn't solved sewer cleaning.
Cameras, crawlers and robot dogs can tell you what's wrong in a pipe. But when a manhole is choked with silt, plastic and sludge, someone still has to remove it. In most cities that someone is still a person, with or without a permit.
The frontier is manipulation: a robot that can go into a narrow, vertical, flooded shaft, see what's there, and physically pull it out. That's the problem Bandicoot was built to solve.
Why Bandicoot travels well
Bandicoot was designed in India, for some of the toughest manholes in the world. That turns out to be its biggest advantage abroad.
- It's built for the shaft as it is. A 6-degree-of-freedom arm and robotic legs let the robotic manhole cleaning system work inside narrow, irregular manholes up to 12 metres deep.
- It sees and senses before acting. Four HD cameras and gas sensors give the operator a live view of the shaft and the air.
- It survives the conditions. An IP68, industrial-grade build handles water, sludge and grit.
- It keeps the worker in the job. Sanitation workers are trained as robot operators and control the robot from the surface.
- It produces data. Every job adds to the record of which manholes block and how often, turning cleaning into planned sewer maintenance.
That combination matters to any city, rich or developing. A utility in Singapore and a municipality in Gujarat face the same physics. Bandicoot sewer cleaning works in both because it was designed for the harder case first.
A no-entry playbook for any city
Whatever their budget, cities that are succeeding tend to follow the same steps.
- Count the entries. Find out how often people still go into manholes, and why.
- Inspect before you clean. Use cameras and sewer inspection to map problem points.
- Match the machine to the space. Jetting and suction trucks for long pipes, a manhole cleaning robot for deep or narrow shafts, a rover like Wilboar for horizontal wells and culverts.
- Retrain the workforce. The people who know the network best should be the ones operating the robots.
- Make no-entry the default in contracts. Entry should need special approval, not the other way round.
- Use the data. Robots that record every job turn reactive cleaning into planned maintenance.
The world is moving in one direction
From Florida to Singapore, from Norway to Gujarat, cities agree on the destination: no one should have to climb into a sewer. They differ only in how fast they're getting there.
The tools now exist. Sewer cleaning technology has moved from rules and trucks to robots that can do the dirtiest part of the job. The cities that move first will be the ones that stop counting deaths.
Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ)
- How do cities clean sewers without sending workers inside? Cities combine four methods: confined-space rules with gas testing and permits, jetting and suction trucks, camera-based sewer inspection robots, and robots that physically clean manholes. Only the last one fully removes the need for a person to enter the manhole.
- Which countries use robots for sewer cleaning? Sewer robots are used or being developed in the United States, across Europe through projects like PIPEON, in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and India. India has the largest deployment of manhole cleaning robots, with Genrobotics' Bandicoot working in more than 120 cities.
- What is the difference between a sewer inspection robot and a sewer cleaning robot? A sewer inspection robot carries cameras and sensors through pipes to find cracks, blockages and gas. A sewer cleaning robot goes further and physically removes silt, sludge and solid waste. Most robots used worldwide today inspect, and far fewer clean.
- Why did Singapore choose Genrobotics for its sewer network? In March 2026, Singapore's national water agency PUB selected Genrobotics after a global competition with more than 600 firms. The selection was based on engineering capability, operational performance and reliability in harsh environments.
- Is Bandicoot used outside India? Yes. Genrobotics has a contract with Singapore's PUB, its Wilboar robot is used by Malaysia's Indah Water, and the company reports clients and expansion in South Korea, the UAE and South Africa.