Italian technology that cleans the environment

A truly serious environmental problem.

Cigarette butts are the second most common waste found on Earth, with an estimated 6 trillion cigarettes inhaled each year and more than 4 trillion cigarette butts simply thrown on the ground, each releasing more than 700 toxic chemicals. different in the environment.

Preventing these cigarette butts from ending up on the ground in the first place would be the best option, but that would require a huge change in human behavior, working under the assumption that changing human behavior is impossible, the roboticists at the Italian Institute of Technology have designed a new platform for cleaning cigarette butts in the form of a quadruped robot with vacuum cleaners attached to its legs.

A specific solution for a specific problem.

There could be much more efficient ways to at least partially automate trash removal with machines, the challenge is that most of that automation relies on wheeled mobility systems that don't work well on the many beaches and flights of stairs in Genoa, In places like these it still falls to humans to do the hard work, which is less than ideal.

This robot called Vero is based on an Aliengo with a commercial vacuum cleaner mounted on its back, hoses run from the vacuum along the leg to each foot, with a custom 3D printed Nozzle that places the maximum possible suction close to the ground without tripping the robot Although the vacuum cleaner is not a new invention, the real contribution here is how the robot autonomously locates things on the floor without losing its balance and then plans how to interact with them using its feet.

Mode of operation and results.

First an operator designates an area for the Vero to clean, after that the robot operates alone, after calculating an exploration path to cover the entire area, the robot uses its onboard cameras and a neural network to detect the trash, that is more complicated than it seems because there may be many cigarette butts on the ground and they all probably look very much the same, so the system has to filter out all the potential duplicates.

The next step is to plan your next movements the Vero has to place the vacuum side of one of its paws very close to each cigarette butt while calculating a safe and stable position for the rest of the body, as this entire process can occur in sand, stairs or other uneven surfaces, the Vero has to prioritize not falling before deciding how to do the collection, the final collection maneuver is adjusted using an extra Intel real sense depth camera mounted on the robot's chin.

Initial tests and a variety of different environments showed that the robot managed to successfully pick up just under 90% of cigarette butts, which is a pretty impressive cup, the robot is not very fast at the task, but unlike A human will never get tired while power is on the battery, so speed in this case is a little less important.