Anyone who has ever had to pick up cigarette butts after a party knows that it is an impossible task to do so on sandy beach hills. That is why they have developed a robot in Italy that goes to the beach to vacuum up cigarette butts completely autonomously.
The robot dog is called VEROwhich stands for Vacuum-cleaner Equipped Robot, and was developed by the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT). The robot is to free the beaches of Genoa, Italy, from the cigarette butts. VERO has vacuum hoses attached to its four legs. They provide enough suction power to pick up a cigarette butt and always make sure that they do not suck too hard, so that VERO can continue to walk normally.
Neural network determines the path
But the most important thing, recognizing whether the legs are touching a butt, is done in the neural network of VERO. By means of cameras, the robot dog sees all the butts, after which the system calculates whether there are duplicates. Then it determines the path to follow and which foot can best be used to clean up, without losing balance. A special Intel RealSense camera for depth, placed on the chin of the robot, comes in handy for the latter.
It works well
It’s a lot of calculations to do at the same time for an autonomous robot, but VERO seems to be quite good at the job it was made for. Initial tests at various locations and beaches show that it picks up just under ninety percent of all cigarette butts.
The speed leaves something to be desired, but as long as its battery doesn’t run out, there’s of course nothing wrong. According to the researchers, VERO is the first robot that uses its legs for propulsion and another task at the same time.
More applications
The researchers also see other applications for their system, such as watering crops, inspecting roads, and securing nails and anchor points during construction work.
A few years ago, the Dutch developed a cleaning robot for the beach, but you could control it remotely using VR glasses.
Read more about robots, or stay informed with our newsletter.
Source: www.bright.nl
