10120974An uncrewed ground vehicle to improve tunnel inspections/maintenance/monitoringClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKXRC Robotics is a UK-based robotics SME with a core project team of Cameron Knighton (Founder/Project Lead), Harry Thorpe (Technical Lead), Vincent Strong (Robotics Engineer), and Sam Sebire (Manufacturing Engineer). The UK's water supply is highly reliant on Victorian-era infrastructure and underground utilities tunnels present ongoing inspection, maintenance, and monitoring challenges. With a combined length over 1.5M km, the UK's utilities tunnels are deteriorating due to ageing, long-term loading, and environmental factors, straining water company resources to provide the estimated 14B litres/daily of water daily necessary for public water supply. In 2021-22, more than half of UK water companies failed to achieve performance goals, sufficiently address water leakages, meet resilience targets, and reduce water supply interruptions and, in 2023, ten of 17 were rated poor or below average for supply interruptions (instances without reliable water supply for \>3 hours). Furthermore, tunnels are unfriendly environments for human activities, with workers imperilled by confined spaces, contaminated water, poisonous chemicals/toxic gasses, and fall/drowning risk. Water supply/sewerage/waste management/remediation employees have the highest UK-industry injury rate, with injuries decreasing worker wellbeing, reducing available workforce, and increasing costs. On-site inspections of tunnels are almost exclusively performed through manual time-consuming activities, with direct human inspection requiring trained staff to move through potentially dangerous environments. Existing state-of-the-art uncrewed ground vehicles (UGV) are unsuitable for utility tunnel inspection, being too large, too slow, or inadequately equipped to operate in tunnel environments. XRC Robotics is developing MFP-2, a next-generation UGV that will facilitate tunnel inspections/maintenance/monitoring. With an adaptable chassis suitable for multiple applications, patented track devices that improve handling/stability (particularly at high speeds), and track purchase/ground clearance/suspension travel that provides impact absorption, MFP-2 will enable all-terrain (including sludge/mud/water) inspection/monitoring with high reliability and speed.