Tons of waste enter urban rivers and waterways, reaching oceans and posing harm to marine life. A lot of this garbage consists of plastic.
The State of River Pollution
Up to 88-99% of the plastic that gets into oceans come from only 10 major rivers. A whopping 8 of them are in Asia. This is likely due to the very high populations in the continent, which is especially concentrated in cities.
Looking ahead, given current trends, the amount of plastic garbage in oceans could triple by 2040. This means 23-37 million metric tons of plastic would enter the oceans eery year.
Clearbot Neo: An AI Boat to Clean Plastic Waste
Open Ocean Engineering, a Hong Kong-based startup, used AI technology to come up with a potential solution. They developed a boat, called Clearbot Neo, that cleans garbage in water autonomously.
The startup plans to deploy large groups of their boats not just in Hong Kong but also other nations.
How Does it Work?
The robotic boat is 3 meters in length and runs on an electric motor powered by a solar battery. Like a roomba for floors, Clearbot Neo moves up and down sections of water to clean trash. It places the trash on a conveyer belt near its bow, which then falls into a holding bin near the boat’s stern. The trash is then recycled or disposed of.
Currently, the boat can clean up to 1 metric ton of trash in one day. It’s not limited to collecting solid waste either. Clearbot Neo can even clean as much as 15 litres of oil to help with oil spills.
Trash Cleaner & Data Collector All in 1
Clearbot Neo is good for cleaning garbage in bodies of water, but it’s able to collect tons of data as well. It can identify and record the types of trash it comes across using AI.
It also uses a two-camera detection system to scan its surroundings.
One camera scans the surface of the water, helping the boat grab trash and avoid marine animals, other vessels, and any other obstacles in the way.
The other camera takes a photo of every piece of trash it collects. The photo and GPS coordinates are then sent to Open Ocean Engineering’s data compliance system. Marine professionals can use this data alongside variables like current and tide behaviour to start tracing where the trash came from.
Inspiration Behind Clearbot Neo
Gupta and Utkarsh Goel founded their startup and started developing the Clearbot Neo not long after graduating from Hong Kong University in 2019.
Their inspiration for the boat came from a vacation to Bali. There, they saw local workers taking water in small boats to pick trash out of the sea by hand. They did this every day to keep the shoreline and beaches clean for tourists.
Seeing how time-consuming and tedious the manual trash cleaning was for the Bali workers, Gupta and Goel thought about how to automate the process. This led to the beginning of Clearbot Neo.
The two of them created a basic aluminum prototype right there in Bali. After returning to Hong Kong, they upgraded it to fiberglass. After making several prototypes, the sleek and efficient Clearbot Neo emerged.
Clearbot Neo is Making Waves in Sustainability
Clearbot Neo delivers a wealth of data to companies, NGOs, individuals, and government bodies. Instead of making educated guesses or extrapolating limited data, they can track the path of marine trash and address the source head-on.
Sino Group, a Hong Kong property company, has recently obtained a model. They plan to work with Gupta and Goel to clean a yacht marina and test the boat further.
Plans to deploy Clearbot Neo to other countries were slowed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Still, the team is confident they can make a global impact on reducing marine trash.
References:
https://news.microsoft.com/en-hk/2022/04/29/this-ai-enabled-robotic-boat-cleans-up-harbors-and-rivers-to-keep-plastic-trash-out-of-the-ocean/
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/
