Autonomous trash-gobbling robo boat wages war on waterway waste

Have you ever looked out at a lake, river, or harbor and been taken aback by the amount of floating trash and debris? company called Clear Robotics is tackling this environmental issue in an innovative way – with autonomous robot boats.

Clear Robotics was founded by two university graduates who wanted to automate the labor-intensive task of cleaning up floating waste from waterways. Their solution is the Clearbot, a robotic vessel that cruises through harbors, lakes and canals while using its open bow to collect floating debris into onboard storage bins.

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Clear Robotics is expanding its fleet

 

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The new vessel’s increased capacity

The new vessel has been designed to gather up to 441 lb of floating garbage per hour and has an onboard storage capacity of 1,100 lb. Because it can be equipped with a towing barge, it can extend its per-trip payload, as mentioned above, to 1.5 tonnes.

 

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Key autonomous features of the class 3 Clearbot

Key features of Clear Robotics’ new Class 3 autonomous marine vessel Clearbot include:

Autonomous waypoint mission path: With Clearbot, you can provide a set of GPS waypoints (i.e., a set of latitude/longitude pairs) and have the robot autonomously navigate from its current location to each of the defined waypoints to collect trash.

Failsafe return to home: Clearbot comes back to the Home Point if it happens to lose signal when connected to a remote controller or through Wi-Fi. With the RTH function, you can ensure safe marine operations even in larger water bodies.

Anti-collision software: 

AI-powered dashboard: Dashboards help Clearbots’ users monitor data-revealed emerging trends, track their operations, and make informed decisions based on rigorous analysis.

 

Clearbot’s new trash-cleaning partnership

Clearbot entered a partnership with Kingspan Group, which is a global leader in high-performance insulation and building envelope solutions, to begin sustainable cleaning of the Nonbah River in Nongstoin City in India. This demonstrates the real-world application and adoption of their autonomous trash collection technology.

 

Kurt’s key takeaways

The rise of autonomous robotic solutions like Clearbot represents a major step forward in tackling the enormous problem of marine pollution and waterway contamination. By leveraging cutting-edge technologies like AI, machine vision, and self-driving capabilities, these systems can operate continuously with minimal human intervention to clear vast areas of floating debris, oil slicks, and invasive vegetation. As the technology matures and costs come down, we could potentially see fleets of these trash goblins patrolling rivers, harbors, and coastlines around the world, making a significant dent in the millions of tons of waste that ends up in our each year.

Have you witnessed the impact of plastic pollution and floating debris in your local waterways? What innovative solutions would you like to see implemented to tackle this environmental issue? Let us know in the comments below.

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