Before we directly jump into making our own waste-collecting bot, let us first understand how waste-collecting bots work and why they are useful.
All About Waste Collecting Bots - Overview
If you travel and look around in your city, you can find garbage dumps at corners, or even litter thrown around dust bins. Even at homes, those bins can get full. Sometimes, it can get too dirty to clean them up. This can be harmful to people and can cause health problems.
A robot that can pick up litter, clear garbage dumps, and empty full trash cans will definitely help avoid health problems and reduce the need for us to clean up the bins.
The waste collector bots have a basket-like container to store or carry the waste they pick up. They pick up waste from dust bins or on the floor and put them inside their baskets. Once the robots are filled up, they drop the waste to a fixed place. But we will be more interested in how they can plan where to go based on the type of waste.
Why Waste Collecting Bots?
Waste collecting robots can collect waste on their own. Garbage collection is a big problem in cities and buildings and thus, these robots can be used to safely pick up the garbage and drop them off at fixed sites. They can even separate organic waste from inorganic waste which makes them very useful.
How Does AI Make Them Smart?
AI teaches the robot to identify different wastes like plastic bottles, paper, metal cans, etc. It even helps them to understand that slippers or shoes are not waste so the robot does not pick them up. AI tells the robot which dustbin is full, and where to empty the trash it has collected. It can even help the robot to not crash into walls or people.
Applications
Here are some of the many useful applications of waste-collecting bots:
They can be used to pick up filled waste bins, scoop garbage from the floor, pick up bits of paper, tin cans, plastic bottles in parks, pavements or from sandy beaches.
They are used in construction or demolition sites to collect building debris.
Robots as boats that collect floating trash in water bodies like lakes and seas.
[caption id="attachment_36467" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image: nootrix.com[/caption]
In the next topic, we'll use artificial intelligence to make a waste-collecting bot using Quarky. Let's get to it!