The autonomous robot called BeachBot was presented that aims to eliminate all cigarette butts from the beaches and in this way keep them clean
The use of robots for different activities. Recently introduced BeachBot, whose main objective is to clean the beaches of the cigarette butts.
Two engineers from the TechTics company were in charge of developing this autonomous robot. It has sensors to identify and remove cigarette butts and other types of waste on the beach.
After two years of development, the prototype of BeachBot, which has a system of artificial intelligence that seeks to combat the environmental problem of the beaches.
The creators focused on cigarette butts as they contain chemicals that are highly toxic to aquatic organisms.
“Cigarette filters are filled with microplastics. It is bad that they end up in nature “
According to some reports, the beaches receive more than 4,500 million cigarette butts. For what BeachBot could identify these elements, about 200 images were presented that were processed by Microsoft’s Trove AI system.
“The system learns to see images like a child recognizing an object for the first time,” says Christian Liensberger, Trove’s program director.
How does the robot work to clean the beaches?
Its developers highlighted that the robot can detect cigarette butts, tear them off and dispose of them in a safe container.
“BeachBot account makes use of two onboard cameras that it uses to look ahead and down. The robot is also designed to avoid people and objects. To catch the butts, BB uses two gripping arms that lowers and then pushes towards the sand “
In his first demonstration, he collected 10 cigarette butts in 30 minutes. But it is expected that BeachBot keep learning to recognize cigarette butts hidden in the sand.
“The robot walks the beaches and uses the cameras and sensors to analyze the environment. After processing the images, it identifies the cigarette butts and removes them with a small robotic arm, even if they are partially buried in the sand. “
Even if BeachBot It is a great helper to keep the streets clean, its developers explained that the main responsible are humans.
“Our robot cannot be the final solution to this serious problem. The main responsible for this garbage is still human behavior “
