A remotely controlled robot that removes asbestos, developed at Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh, can work 10 times as fast as a human. The
robot, called a boa, crawls along the outside of pipes chewing off the
insulating asbestos and putting it safely in a bag. It then coats the cleaned
pipe with a quick-drying glue that sticks any stray fibres on the pipe. The
robot should cut cleanup costs by 30 per cent.
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