Highlights:

  • Robot Bombyx by Facebook simply winds fiber-optic cables around the present MV power lines to offer a faster internet connection.
  • The robot uses a vision system to identify obstacles and adjust itself to MV power lines.

Facebook Connectivity, along with ULC Robotics, has created a robot that has the capability to install fiber cables on live medium voltage (MV) power lines to offer a faster internet connection. According to Facebook, power lines are available in several residential areas across the globe. Thus, power lines are three to five times lower in costs than conventional aerial fiber construction and save costs in installing optical fiber connectivity.

The code name of the robot is Bombyx that is Latin for silkworm. The robot rests on the top of the MV power line, thus balancing high above the ground. Facebook’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg always wanted to expand access to the internet. Bombyx crawls along power lines and covers its streamlined fiber cables around the MV power lines. As a result, lowering the cost of fiber deployment by using the current electrical infrastructure.

Karthik Yogeeswaran, a Wireless Systems Engineer at Facebook’s Connectivity group and the brain behind the new robot, said, “Half the world’s population is not connected.” In an interview, he also mentioned that approximately 80% of people don’t use the internet as they cannot afford it.

“Fiber has orders of magnitude more bandwidth than basically any other technology,” Yogeeswaran said. “We want to allow abundance so that more people can get more data.” He mentioned that the idea for robot design came after journeying via rural Africa.

To keep costs down, Facebook needs to avoid manual interruptions and minimize disturbance in electrical services. The robot was designed in such a way that it can avoid and identify obstacles and adjust its movements to clear obstacles along the MV power line while preventing any electrical accident.

Maintaining robot weight was a major task as it would reduce the quantity of fiber it could carry along power lines. Therefore, the size of the cable needed to be reduced. Finally, they used a cable of G.657-compliant 200-micron fibers with a superior jacket weighing up 28 pounds for a 1 km span. To navigate barriers and adjust its movements, a vision system was used.

Yogeeswaran said, “To account for the human interaction steps such as setup, loading and unloading the robot, installing transitions, etc., we have been conservatively estimating an overall build speed of 1.5km to 2km per robot per day on average.”

In emerging economies, to run the robot would cost between USD 2 and USD 3 per meter. Also, “By lowering the total cost of aerial fiber deployment, we expect that our system will have a significant impact on internet penetration, especially among the half of the world earning less than $5.50 per day,” Yogeeswaran said.

Still, there are several steps to complete before the first deployment. He said, “we have confidence that this approach will yield a substantial improvement to both the cost and speed of fiber deployments.”

Facebook is not the only tech industry researching fiber. Google and traditional carriers like Verizon also created fiber but have struggled along the way.