The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:

From the article: Professor Yan Zhuge, an engineering expert at the University of South Australia, is trialing a novel solution. It involves no humans or bots but self-healing concrete.

The world-first project, if successful, could be a significant help. It could prevent 17,000 kilometers of sewer pipes in Australia from cracking in the future without any intervention by humans, helping to save $1.4 billion in annual maintenance costs, as per a release.

"We are confident this novel self-healing concrete based on advance composite technology will address issues of sewer pipe corrosion and sludge disposal in one hit," Zhuge said in a statement.

The microcapsules will release healing agents when pH value changes

Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars are required to treat sewage pipes buckling under internal pressure, temperature fluctuations, and corrosive acid. Self-healing concrete, in the form of microcapsules filled with water treatment sludge, could change everything.

"Sludge waste shows promise to mitigate microbial corrosion in concrete sewer pipes because it works as a healing agent to resist acid corrosion and heal the cracks," Zhuge said.

According to the release, researchers will develop microcapsules with a pH-sensitive shell and a healing agent core with alum sludge, a by-product of wastewater treatment plants, and calcium hydroxide powder. This combination will be resistant to microbially induced corrosion.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zng494/a_worldfirst_project_that_uses_selfhealing/j0gnc4a/