Though there's a certain amount of apprehension toward robots and their use in everyday life, some robots are being implemented to help with the world's massive waste problem.
1. Robot dog
A new robot dog has been developed to help tackle an overlooked form of pollution — cigarette butts. An estimated over four trillion cigarette butts are discarded across the planet every year, and they are primarily made out of plastic.
The robot dog named VERO (Vacuum-cleaner Equipped Robot) has vacuums mounted on its back with hoses down the legs to pick up litter.
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2. Autonomous boats
Clearbot boats are up and running, floating around and collecting trash. The self-driving boats are fully solar powered and collect thousands of pounds of debris from polluted waterways in India and Hong Kong.
Not only is the project beneficial for beachgoers and tourists who don't want to see trash in rivers and marinas, but it's also helpful for the environment and the local marine life.
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3. AI recycling
Sorting recycling is one of the U.S.'s biggest problems, as a lack of awareness causes many recyclable materials to end up in landfills. Luckily, new AI-powered robots are being implemented that can detect recyclables from trash streams and effectively separate them.
The new robots can pick 80 different recyclables out of a trash stream per minute, twice the amount of a human worker.
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4. Tiny biohybrid robots
An increasingly growing problem is the microplastics that are breaking down and contaminating waterways, making cleanup efforts more difficult. That's why scientists have designed tiny biohybrid microrobots that could solve this problem without further damaging aquatic habitats.
The microrobots had "remarkable removal efficiency," removing 92% of nanoplastics (less than 1000 nanometers in size) and 70% of microplastics (less than five millimeters in size).
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5. Sand rover
BeBots are remote-controlled robots that patrol beaches and clean up garbage. They can dig up to four inches into the sand and collect debris as small as a fingernail, collecting items like bottle caps, cigarette butts, food packaging, and other small plastic scraps.
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Definitely 👍 The robots run on solar and battery power, further proving their efficiency over the large-scale machines currently in use that run on dirty energy like tractors.
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