FT Rethink
How cities can heal themselves
As urbanisation accelerates and infrastructure decays, researchers are working out how cities can heal themselves. As the FT’s Nikou Asgari explains, they are carrying out tests on materials that repair themselves and an army of maintenance robots that can work around the clock. Small robotic worms will find and fix leaks in buried water pipes and drones will detect and patch up potholes in the middle of night.
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