Launching the Pittsburgh Bridge Initiative at Mach9 Robotics

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Mach9 Robotics

7 min readJan 31, 2022

On Friday, January 28, 2022, we witnessed the tragic, shaking collapse of Fern Hollow Bridge in our own backyard. The incident occurred two miles from Carnegie Mellon University, where our entire founding team went to school, and this is not the first time we have seen infrastructure collapse in Pittsburgh. From buses falling into sinkholes, to water main breaks, to landslides clearing neighborhoods, we are seeing the dramatic and life-threatening effects of our nation’s aging infrastructure. Unfortunately, similar issues are occurring across our nation.

Map of Pittsburgh with the location of the former Fern Hollow Bridge, Carnegie Mellon University, and Mach9 Robotics office locations marked. — Map showing the location of Mach9 Robotics and Carnegie Mellon University relative to the collapse of Fern Hollow Bridge.

Jennifer Homendy of the National Transportation Safety Board said recently at the Fern Hollow site that the tragedy should serve as a “call to action” on infrastructure issues [1]. Others have suggested that we need to “up our game.” Mach9 Robotics couldn’t agree more as it is essential to our mission and critical to our country.

We created Mach9 Robotics to proactively prevent infrastructure failures before our communities face the aftermath of degrading critical infrastructure, including utilities, roads, and bridges. We realized the need for technology that helps stakeholders receive traceable and unbiased information to identify risks in urban infrastructure. Through sophisticated software and integrated hardware devices, Mach9 assesses how surface and underground infrastructure changes over time to detect actionable risks. Bridge inspectors need to be supported by state-of-art technology gathering detailed data rather than relying on their own visual observations and possibly inaccurate historical information. Just as x-rays and MRIs are used alongside medical records and history to diagnose problems in healthcare, Mach9 is deploying advanced sensors to make critical decisions about infrastructure in minutes, not months.

The Problem

Collapse of Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh’s Frick Park [2].

Bus falling into sinkhole in downtown Pittsburgh [3].

Infrastructure in the United States is driving toward its “expiration date” (the expected service age) [4]. The American Society of Civil Engineers rates the United States an aggregate “C-” score on its infrastructure report card and previously scored the U.S. at a “D+” as recently as 2017. Pennsylvania, Mach9’s home, is in the bottom quartile for urban infrastructure, with 16.6% of bridges rated structurally deficient [5,6]. While the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal passed this November was a preliminary step toward solving the nation’s varied infrastructure problems, it does not identify the critical needs which require immediate attention [7].

Beyond visible roads and bridges, important resources for the American people also exist underground. In our country, there is a water main break every 2 minutes, and an underground utility is struck every 6 minutes during excavation [5,8]. In addition to the tremendous cost to taxpayers, approximately 6 billion gallons of treated water are wasted on a daily basis, not to mention the potential dangers of old pipes contaminating our drinking supply [5]. Located next to our running water and wastewater systems are complex networks of gas pipelines and fiber optic cables which power and connect our country, and must also operate safely and resiliently to protect the general public.

Further exacerbating these issues, federal infrastructure investments have historically failed to address communities equitably. By creating a scalable digital data collection process and democratizing access to those insights, we hope to provide unbiased, concrete metrics by which policymakers can evaluate infrastructure scorecards and prioritize disadvantaged communities [9].

To efficiently remedy the deteriorating pipes, roads, electrical lines, and levies across the United States, we need access to the untapped trove of data which exists across our infrastructure assets. While infrastructure is typically inspected according to well defined standards, current methods have difficulty distinguishing between “poor condition” and “imminent failure condition.” We envision a world where users equipped with our technology can diagnose critical problems and easily communicate useful information to engineers, regulators, and community stakeholders. This information can then be used to make decisions on where to prioritize funding and investing for infrastructure development. Still, innovation does not stop with how resources are allocated. We’re building an integrated platform which enables front-line workers to respond effectively to dynamic problems and enhances their time-critical decision making.

Introducing the Pittsburgh Bridge Initiative

Digital reconstruction of the Three Sisters and Sixteenth Street bridges created by Mach9 Robotics.

Pittsburgh steel built our nation’s infrastructure, and we believe Pittsburgh technology will help fix our nation’s infrastructure. Over the past few decades, our city has evolved into a technological powerhouse that benefits the world. At Mach9, we’re pushing the boundaries of how computers see the world to create the future of cities right here in the City of Bridges.

To respond to the challenge of degrading infrastructure in our region, we have launched the Pittsburgh Bridge Initiative to map, monitor, and assess the nearly 450 bridges in the greater Pittsburgh area over the next year.

We will accomplish this by deploying our fleet of mobile mapping devices, called CUBEs, to create detailed surface and underground models of each bridge. We are partnering with OEMs and land surveyors to rapidly deploy our CUBEs with cutting-edge ground penetrating radars, sensitive infrared cameras, and less-traditional sensors to incorporate data that is typically not obtained through standard, visual inspections. The information we’re collecting will be used to help decision makers understand risks that may not be visible to the human eye and identify preventable problems early enough to avoid future bridge collapses. This data can also help safely extend the life of our nation’s existing infrastructure, saving taxpayer dollars and lives.

We look forward to working with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and many of the region’s top civil engineers, land surveyors, and construction firms to build technology to help communicate about our transportation infrastructure. Our goal is to incentivize and prioritize investments to drive change where it is needed most and to build a better future in western Pennsylvania, and the world beyond.

Digitizing highway bridge infrastructure on the Pennsylvania 28 by Mach9 Robotics.

About Us

The founding team of Mach9 Robotics overlooking Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield Bridge.

Our team originally met while working as students at Carnegie Mellon, which is just one of the amazing institutions that has made Pittsburgh the “Robotics Capital of the World” [10]. We were introduced to the infrastructure space while working for acclaimed CMU professor William “Red” Whittaker on developing robots to characterize legacy nuclear facilities for the Department of Energy. We have contributed to different industrial and academic programs at SpaceX, Tesla, Boeing, and Google X and have supported the development of robust robotic systems while on CMU’s team in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge.

Recognizing the complexity of the problems described above, we formed a team of highly-motivated software and hardware engineers to join forces in the fight against failing infrastructure. We created Mach9 to apply the technology we were building as students and researchers into the real-world. Together, we are crafting a seamless, digital solution targeted at mapping both above- and underground infrastructure, while connecting stakeholders on a single, collaborative platform. From constructing a centralized data source to the key analysis tools, our team brings together a uniquely powerful fusion of perspectives and experiences to share meaningful insights from geospatial data.

We are also planning to deploy our technology to provide detailed underground information to improve the One Call system (otherwise known as “Call 811” or the “Call Before You Dig” program). We will provide accurate local underground information in order to reduce the $30 billion in damages from utility strikes each year [11].

Mach9 Robotics is located at the base of Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield Bridge, and we are growing our team to bring together the top business, design, and engineering minds to define the future of cities. For more information, visit www.mach9.io or reach out to pittsburghbridges@mach9.io.