A Trash Collecting Robot?
Urban Rivers raised roughly $30,000 via their Kickstarter page to put in a floating garden along the Chicago River in 2017. The goal was to bring more nature into one of the city’s major urban waterways.
After the garden was put in, however, floating garbage became a big concern for the metropolis.
The garbage is brought along the current and the waterborne refuse contains plastic krill and Styrofoam in the vegetal baleen of a whale around the edge of the garden.
Human efforts regarding trash removal proved to be quite difficult due to the constancy and volume of the trash, so the group had to start thinking of some high-tech solutions to solve the problem.
After some collaboration, they were able to come up with a technologically savvy plan – a remote-operated robot that can assist in trash removal and can be controlled by anyone anywhere.
The Public Gets Involved
By itself, it was not only intriguing but generated a lot of curiosity. Allowing the public to use the trash collecting robot was a little unorthodox. Urban Rivers, on the other hand, thinks it’s great because it takes the boring, mundane experience of picking up trash and turns it into a game. In this way, they hope some good Samaritans will continue to come back and help.
This is a custom robot controlled by Wi-Fi. Users must log into a website first before they can use the robot. On the front, there’s also a tractor loader. The players will be able to deposit their trash remotely into a collection zone where Urban Rivers employees will collect it regularly.
Users will be awarded points based on how much trash they’re able to collect during a certain time period.
The team currently needs around $5,000 in crowdfunding donations to improve a prototype for the trash collecting robot.
A home-based trash station, as well as a high-powered Wi-Fi station, will be built and the design will be modified to withstand every season according to a description on Urban Rivers’ Kickstarter page. Additional funding will go towards experimentation and further prototyping.
Doing the Right Thing
Gamification is a new term that’s being used in a world of self-improvements because of apps such as Todoist and Habitica. When a person receives a reward for completing a task, they’re more motivated to do the right thing.
Concerning the trash collecting robot, previous high scores for collecting garbage gives players an incentive to collect more garbage to unseat the leaders.
While there are some risks involved in placing a robot onto an urban waterway including possible theft or vandalism, Urban Rivers hopes that a GPS tracker embedded into it will lessen the likelihood of the latter occurring.
Small delivery vehicles and security guard robots which are currently in operation haven’t had any major issues with vandalism, but the number of samples is still pretty small.
If the garbage collecting robot proves to be successful, Urban Rivers will be able to use a similar approach to other areas such as wildlife monitoring.