The article mentions stair climbing as a requirement, not sure I buy that.
Even wheeled robots can climb stairs with the right platform, I think that's still cheaper, less complex and error prone.
But from a pragmatic perspective, it sounds like a very reasonable tradeoff to simply not support stair climbing. It's not like that thing is gonna walk itself from the workshop to the target area. If someone has to carry it anyway, they could conceivably carry it down some stairs while at it.
(I'm a rather incompetent hobbyist when it comes to robotics, but I've been researching locomotion quite a bit and find a wheeled platform to be a good choice even in the forest environments I focus on. Guess it's just not exciting enough.)
1. Stair climbing isn’t just about movement from top to bottom. Stairs are a common place where people drop litter. Cleaning litter on the stairs isn’t accomplished by carrying the robot down the stairs.
2. Why do you believe the robot will always have a minder? The objective very much would be setting these off from a central location and covering a whole neighborhood or city.
If the point is to clean beaches and that's it, I think my points hold. Sure, there are stairs on some beaches, but it's not really any significant percentage of the space to be cleaned up, thus not really worth optimising for IMHO.
If the point is to _start_ with beaches and to then use the same platform to clean up all kinds of yet to be determined areas, a quadruped might indeed be one of the few viable options. Wheeled robots can climb stairs with the right platform, but I wouldn't argue they can traverse arbitrary terrain the way quadrupeds can.
Personally, when designing robots, I have very clear tasks and constraints in mind, making conscious tradeoffs. But I'm a software developer, that's how we do things. It's perhaps not how professional roboticists do things.
> The challenge is that most of that automation relies on mobility systems with wheels, which won’t work on the many beautiful beaches (and many beautiful flights of stairs) of Genoa.
From the 3rd paragraph. Also Spot is an already developed robot platform, and it’s much simpler to use that than make a robot from scratch.
I suspect the project has broader goals, but presenting it as solving a problem familiar to most (i.e. litter) is mostly for the exposure that would bring.
This is probably EU innovation funds at work. Still impressing that they assembled something resembling a functional prototype, and not only gigabytes of PDFs and DOCXs.
That's probably why they never show it on sand - it would suck it up. Things with the highest surface-to-mass ratio would make it to the top of the vertical tubes — things like dust, cigarette butts, and candy wrappers. Pebbles have too low of a surface-to-mass ratio to get sucked all the way up the vertical tube.
That might be okay. Sand can be sifted and gravel and cigarette butts separate by density with shaking the container. Sand and pebbles can then be returned to beach. (Sand depletion is a concern in many areas.). Robo-dog could return to a dock which automates part of that separation process. Then return the sand to the same spot. Cleaning might be a concern (spreading spores of invasive species) if used in different areas.
I'm a person who never throws cigarette butts, chewing gums, or shit with my dog all over the place. This is an entire domain of problems and solutions which shouldn't even exist.
True. It's the same with projects like 'The Ocean Cleanup'. In Mainland China there's an army of underpaid elderly street sweepers earning basically nothing (2k RMB/month), who constantly clean up after folks mindlessly dropping their trash on the streets. Or take the craze around drugs like semaglutide (Ozempic) in the West. Technologists constantly come up with solutions that directly or indirectly support immoral behavior and unsustainable lifestyles.
I'm not saying let's not have robots cleaning up. But first of all, before we look to such solutions, litterers should be fined to high heaven. Make it sting, so that these people don't even think about doing it anymore. Make it day fines, based on the person's income. They will learn to keep beaches clean that way.
> Or take the craze around drugs like semaglutide (Ozempic) in the West. Technologists constantly come up with solutions that directly or indirectly support immoral behavior and unsustainable lifestyles.
Why the dig at obesity?
If there's anything we are learning from GLP-1 medications, it is that, for many, weight control is not a moral failing. Many of these people will have spent thousands on coaching, gyms, nutrition plans, counselling, and any other option to try to lose weight the 'hard' way. Literal blood sweat and tears. Statistically, those interventions don't work well in the long term. Plenty of the morally unimpeachable suffer from weight issues. Clearly there is a physiological component as well. This medication treats it.
Is it also a moral failing to take a Tylenol to treat a hangover headache instead of suffering through the pain until it goes away? Maybe surgery patients should just tough it out, without anesthesia like they used to in the 1800s instead of taking the easy way out?
People are treated for 'self-inflicted' physical issues constantly. Why are you picking on overweight ones?
Ozempic was approved in the US for treatment for type 2 diabetes, but over a third of users are taking it off-label, they have no history of diabetes¹. Of course one can phrase it in a way that makes it sound like they're suffering from a disease and are getting the "medication" they need. Would you say the same about folks using benzos off-label though?
We use positive language (medication) or negative (drug abuse) depending on the picture we want to paint. The point is these are examples of things that shouldn't exist, because for most of us who're healthy and able bodied, we can take our trash and throw it in a bin. And we don't need to inject drugs, we should better train to be disciplined and eat less. Obesity in places like the US is mainly cultural. By trying to solve the problem with technology instead of changing the attitude towards health, they will only become more dependent on drugs.
Semaglutide for weight loss isn't off label. Using Semaglutide in the Ozempic auto-dispenser is off-label. Using it in a different syringe sold under the name Wegovy is the only difference. Same drug, different packaging. It is the exact same medication, delivered via injection, except one is sold in a fancier syringe.
Either way, off-label usage of drugs doesn't bother me. If someone is using off-label Benzodiazepines as an effective treatment under the supervision of a competent doctor, that seems like a good thing. Sometimes I use bandaids to protect against blisters even though the packaging doesn't indicate that usage. It isn't a moral failing to get an effective use out of something that wasn't designed for it?
> Obesity in places like the US is mainly cultural. By trying to solve the problem with technology instead of changing the attitude towards health, they will only become more dependent on drugs.
What you aren't grasping is that actual experts don't see it this way. The use of Semaglutide points to the fact that obesity is caused, at least in part, by a hormonal imbalance. How is culture unbalancing hormones? Experts still don't understand why so many people in some areas are affected. Actual scientists have done controlled studies and found that culturally similar people in different geographies have wildly varying rates of obesity. We live in a culture, where (as you have proven) people will openly judge, insult and shame strangers for being fat. Being fat isn't culturally accepted anywhere (maybe a few isolated cultures are the exception). Nobody wants to be fat. There is a multi-billion dollar industry that serves people doing everything they can to NOT be fat, and it is notoriously ineffective.
If being dependent on pharmaceutical intervention is what it takes to help people live longer, more independent lives, that costs society less in the long run, then that's fine. We happily accept lifelong pharmaceutical dependency for a range of conditions, including ones that are purely quality of life related. Do you go around telling burn victims that cosmetic reconstructive surgery is a moral failing?
I understand that lifestyle affects weight. "Eat less and exercise more". Every fat person already knows this. People who have the willpower to get PHDs, to run successful companies, to do every difficult thing in life, fail at losing weight and keeping it off. Being fat is not a moral failing.
Its like telling depressed people to cheer up. It doesn't work, and it isn't a moral failing to have clinical depression. Lifestyle choices can affect depression, and it is treatable without medication sometimes. But oftentimes pharmaceutical interventions are the best option.
Please show me references substantiating your claim that obesity is "in partz due to hormonal imbalance."
As a doctor, I would say most obesity is due to a combination of
- people eating the "wrong" foods (ie not whole foods)
- much of this is likely due to the change in food manufacturing over the last 60 years ie. Cheaper to make processed foods ie More profit
- advertising especially psychologically asculpted advertising
- less physical activity dt. Variou reasons
IMO it is extremely unlikely that a substantial proportion of obese people have "a hormonal imbalance" ( unless you mean one created by the excess adipose tissue, altered probiotic balance with subsequent host hormonal effects in a positive feedback loop etc).
If you really want to lose weight, and you have enough resolve, then cutting out all sugar and processed foods and eating a whole plant food diet with a mixture of hiit and weight training will bring people to a good weight in (I'll make an educated guess) 95% of cases.
The problem, as I see it, is that food corporations aRe doing everything they can to addict people to their processed foods, people are doing less exercise/movement on average, and these are becoming culturally ingrained.
"hormonal imbalance" - gt your doctor to do a blood test and check tfts, fsh/lh, hba1c etc
In the vast majority of cases, it will not be a "hormonal imbalance" and I have to question why you want to think this.
Less "blame" on theindividual?
I think the solution is
- good education from a young age
- change corporate actions
- change the culture
Obviously, difficult, though we can all find good information for an individual level.
My broader point is that, yes, external factors like low activity lifestyles and a diet that contains too much processed food are contributors. But what they are contributing to is an internal mechanism as well. Explain why some rail thin people get no exercise and eat nothing but garbage? Why do some fat people eat whole foods based diets and get daily exercise, but persist in being fat? When people regain weight, why do they tend to regress back to their original weight range, but not continue beyond that? Why has modern medicine been relatively unable to treat obesity until we started injecting GLP-1 hormone analogues? Why has saturated fat consumption been dropping as obesity has been rising? Why has refined sugar consumption been dropping with no effect on obesity?
The science on root causes of obesity are evolving quite a bit. I would hope you are more open minded to hearing from your patients and experts in the field. Treat your obese patients with more dignity, and don’t treat their condition like it is a moral failing, or something entirely within their control. Talk to your patients about the level of effort some of them go towards losing weight. You might be shocked to learn the amount of literal blood, sweat and tears expended, and how much their efforts are seemingly in vain. Everyone, not just doctors, know that eat less, eat better, exercise more is the recommended way to lose weight. But it just doesn’t work in the long term.
We've tried to change attitude around obesity, exercise, eating habits, etc. We should keep trying, but let's not pretend it's a new, unchallenged issue. Changing the culture of a country is hard.
Gravity exists. It causes things to fall over. Wind exists. It blows trash around. Garbage trucks have items fall over the side. Accidents happen.
You think your trash never ends up where it's not supposed to. There is literally no reason to believe this other than to reserve a position for yourself in the judgement of others.
I don't think this would matter, cigarette butts would still be unpleasant even if they'd decompose, much like biodegradable bags are still bad to find around.
The problem biodegradable plastics solve is microplastic that accumulates in our bodies, ocean etc. People still have to dispose of them properly of course, because it can still take years for a whole bag to dissolve.
I thought most biodegradable plastic bags were just plastic bits, alternating with biodegradable bits, so the bags fall apart but the plastic still exists in little pieces?
OK, fair enough... but isn't that the lion's share of "biodegradable" plastic? The reason I say that, is I can assure you it is marketed as such. That it "breaks down" in the environment.
Which it does. Into little pieces. Quite annoying.
I don't really care what people do with their lungs, so whether they want to smoke or not, that's their problem. That being said, I definitely have an issue with smokers who think it's ok to throw cigarette butts on the ground. It's crazy how we still allow non-biodegradable cigarette filters to exist.
How is this relevant? I didn't say we should allow smoking everywhere, or that smokers don't need to exercise basic courtesy when they are around non-smokers. I said it's not my business whether someone else decides to be a smoker or not.
Fair enough - did not mean to be glib. As much as I dog you boys here sometimes, I really enjoy your comments. HN makes Reddit comments seem like porno video comments by comparison quality wise.
Because the smoke spreads, and you don't always have a choice to avoid it.
It also drives up the cost of healthcare, which because of insurance or socialized healthcare we all pay more for (either higher premiums or higher taxes).
I don’t like the “drives up the cost of health care” argument because the same argument can be used to outlaw motorcycle or horseback riding, or anything else that’s a higher risk activity. Do we as a society actually want to do that?
> These filter tips are designed without plastic, they are biodegradable according to NF EN14995 norm and disintegrate in water (in particular seas and oceans).
When I clear up the litter from my paved front yard I fill a rubbish bag. The cigarette butts are the single most common item but they aren't even a hand full. They are just a tiny fraction of the vast quantity of litter that gets dropped in the street.
I don't drop litter and I wish nobody else would but the focus on cigarettes is just baffling. It seems to be driven by anti-smoking campaigners who have latched on to the "most common litter" and don't actually care about litter in general.
Looks to me like this is an innovation fund project which demonstrates a cool idea. Most of the comments here are complaining about practical issues but I don’t believe running this thing all day long on a public beach is the primary goal.
I’m not sure whether it is the press coverage that implies that this is a highly practical solution, or if the actual makers claim that too. But I look at it as a clever maker hack, not a commercial product which should be picked apart as flawed.
> but I don’t believe running this thing all day long on a public beach is the primary goal.
So it will create more waste than it will ever dispose of.
> not a commercial product which should be picked apart as flawed.
This is hacker news. It does not matter if your product is "commercial" or not. If it has flaws, they will be discussed here, we are not obligated to be cheerleaders for ideological solutioneering.
I hate splitting / magic bullet fallacies as much as the next guy, but the problem with these sorts of efforts is that they re-cast public perception of who is responsible for creating the problem, taxing the producers/consumers to pay for the costs they are incurring to society so that it is not economically feasible to produce "disposable" materials that never break down, getting them to stop, and holding them responsible for cleanup.
They're also completely insignificant, and actually make the problem worse, because it addresses the problem where people see it, which is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total problem.
Same with the highly publicized "man cleans up _____ and collects ___ bags of trash at park/beach, yay humanity!" stories. Media are pushed by plastics companies to cover these "feel good stories" because it implies that the problem can and should be addressed by citizen efforts like that. "Why if we all did that, we'd solve plastic pollution" seems to be the problem. It also sort of implies that if we had a lot more people like Mr. Good Guy Greg Litter Remover, the problem would be solved - when plastic is distributed pervasively through the entire ecosystem.
Can't clean up the millions of tons of plastic floating at all levels of the ocean, sitting on the ocean floor, in the stomachs of marine wildlife, etc.
This robot dog is like driving half-way across the country to spit on a wildfire and then calling up a bunch of news stations to tell them how you helped.
Not to mention all the resources consumed building the stupid thing that could have gone towards carbon and greenhouse gas reduction. Really, this is just some CS / robotics lab's vanity project.
If I'm going to assume that most babies, some children, and a few third world people do not smoke at all, and round it down to 3.5 billion smokers alive in the world today, you're saying that every single smoker throws 3 cigarettes into the ocean (just the ocean, not counting landfills) every single day?
It is possible to dramatically reduce littering. Singapore has strict littering punishments. You don’t see a lot of litter on the ground. Of course caning people for littering isn’t a very popular policy in most countries.
But in Singapore they also pay people to sweep the streets, because despite the laws, trash still will accumulate. Note that Singapore also doesn’t have a minimum wage which means people can be paid a low amount to clean the streets.
In the U.S. we don’t enforce littering laws, and we also mostly don’t pay people to sweep streets. So we have very dirty streets.
What a robot can do is work for very low cost to clean up streets. Far below minimum wage.
"So, this is about a lot more than cigarette butts, and the researchers suggest a variety of other potential use cases, including spraying weeds in crop fields, inspecting cracks in infrastructure, and placing nails and rivets during construction."
How do the sifting machines differentiate between cigarette butts and little sticks/rocks/pieces of driftwood &c?
If this dog vacuum thing is not too noisy and can unobtrusively navigate an area it seems like it might be a pleasant "always on" addition. I used to work a maintenance job where I'd show up at 1am and sweep up dozens of cigarette butts from the parking lot. Then I'd pop back out around dawn and there'd be a dozen new ones! It really is a constant and ongoing issue.
Perhaps the robot could monitor the area for active smokers and just go over and offer up an ash tray.
Articulation is much more complex. You go from "vacuum thing I found that looks like trash" to "create a 3D model of this scene, route the robotic appendage thru it, find the ideal grasping point at center of mass, make first attempt, compensate for shift due to wind/previous attempt..." etc.
Then there is the mechanics. Aside from mobility, consider a grasping arm's many servos and wiring harness vs. electric motor goes brr for the vacuum.
Does it benefit from having four legs, other than to make it look unnervingly doglike? It seems like a robot spider might be more efficient, if not also more terrifying.
Article starts off “Thanks to VERO, Genoa has fewer cigarette butts littering the ground” but I doubt this has been designed to be deployed at scale, beyond demonstrations.
I've thought about this when I see bottles and other crap strewn on the streets or in parks.
Then I see a garbage can nearby that's been tipped over by someone, or an animal, or the wind.
A cigarette butt or bottle on the ground doesn't mean the person who bought it and used it tossed it on the ground. It could mean they put it in the designated garbage and someone came along and strew garbage everywhere.
131 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadStep 1: I would like to have a cool robot.
Step 2: How do I plausibly justify cool robot?
Everyone knows cool robots have legs, not wheels.
No legs. Just wheels. You might need to tweak your "cool" setting. You might be too aggressively filtering out some cool things
Even wheeled robots can climb stairs with the right platform, I think that's still cheaper, less complex and error prone.
But from a pragmatic perspective, it sounds like a very reasonable tradeoff to simply not support stair climbing. It's not like that thing is gonna walk itself from the workshop to the target area. If someone has to carry it anyway, they could conceivably carry it down some stairs while at it.
(I'm a rather incompetent hobbyist when it comes to robotics, but I've been researching locomotion quite a bit and find a wheeled platform to be a good choice even in the forest environments I focus on. Guess it's just not exciting enough.)
Agreed. That requirement seems to be at odds with the premise of cleaning up beaches.
2. Why do you believe the robot will always have a minder? The objective very much would be setting these off from a central location and covering a whole neighborhood or city.
If the point is to _start_ with beaches and to then use the same platform to clean up all kinds of yet to be determined areas, a quadruped might indeed be one of the few viable options. Wheeled robots can climb stairs with the right platform, but I wouldn't argue they can traverse arbitrary terrain the way quadrupeds can.
Personally, when designing robots, I have very clear tasks and constraints in mind, making conscious tradeoffs. But I'm a software developer, that's how we do things. It's perhaps not how professional roboticists do things.
From the 3rd paragraph. Also Spot is an already developed robot platform, and it’s much simpler to use that than make a robot from scratch.
I'm not saying let's not have robots cleaning up. But first of all, before we look to such solutions, litterers should be fined to high heaven. Make it sting, so that these people don't even think about doing it anymore. Make it day fines, based on the person's income. They will learn to keep beaches clean that way.
Why the dig at obesity?
If there's anything we are learning from GLP-1 medications, it is that, for many, weight control is not a moral failing. Many of these people will have spent thousands on coaching, gyms, nutrition plans, counselling, and any other option to try to lose weight the 'hard' way. Literal blood sweat and tears. Statistically, those interventions don't work well in the long term. Plenty of the morally unimpeachable suffer from weight issues. Clearly there is a physiological component as well. This medication treats it.
Is it also a moral failing to take a Tylenol to treat a hangover headache instead of suffering through the pain until it goes away? Maybe surgery patients should just tough it out, without anesthesia like they used to in the 1800s instead of taking the easy way out?
People are treated for 'self-inflicted' physical issues constantly. Why are you picking on overweight ones?
We use positive language (medication) or negative (drug abuse) depending on the picture we want to paint. The point is these are examples of things that shouldn't exist, because for most of us who're healthy and able bodied, we can take our trash and throw it in a bin. And we don't need to inject drugs, we should better train to be disciplined and eat less. Obesity in places like the US is mainly cultural. By trying to solve the problem with technology instead of changing the attitude towards health, they will only become more dependent on drugs.
¹ https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/27/health/semaglutide-equita...
Either way, off-label usage of drugs doesn't bother me. If someone is using off-label Benzodiazepines as an effective treatment under the supervision of a competent doctor, that seems like a good thing. Sometimes I use bandaids to protect against blisters even though the packaging doesn't indicate that usage. It isn't a moral failing to get an effective use out of something that wasn't designed for it?
> Obesity in places like the US is mainly cultural. By trying to solve the problem with technology instead of changing the attitude towards health, they will only become more dependent on drugs.
What you aren't grasping is that actual experts don't see it this way. The use of Semaglutide points to the fact that obesity is caused, at least in part, by a hormonal imbalance. How is culture unbalancing hormones? Experts still don't understand why so many people in some areas are affected. Actual scientists have done controlled studies and found that culturally similar people in different geographies have wildly varying rates of obesity. We live in a culture, where (as you have proven) people will openly judge, insult and shame strangers for being fat. Being fat isn't culturally accepted anywhere (maybe a few isolated cultures are the exception). Nobody wants to be fat. There is a multi-billion dollar industry that serves people doing everything they can to NOT be fat, and it is notoriously ineffective.
If being dependent on pharmaceutical intervention is what it takes to help people live longer, more independent lives, that costs society less in the long run, then that's fine. We happily accept lifelong pharmaceutical dependency for a range of conditions, including ones that are purely quality of life related. Do you go around telling burn victims that cosmetic reconstructive surgery is a moral failing?
I understand that lifestyle affects weight. "Eat less and exercise more". Every fat person already knows this. People who have the willpower to get PHDs, to run successful companies, to do every difficult thing in life, fail at losing weight and keeping it off. Being fat is not a moral failing.
Its like telling depressed people to cheer up. It doesn't work, and it isn't a moral failing to have clinical depression. Lifestyle choices can affect depression, and it is treatable without medication sometimes. But oftentimes pharmaceutical interventions are the best option.
https://usafacts.org/articles/obesity-rate-nearly-triples-un...
Please show me references substantiating your claim that obesity is "in partz due to hormonal imbalance."
As a doctor, I would say most obesity is due to a combination of
- people eating the "wrong" foods (ie not whole foods)
- much of this is likely due to the change in food manufacturing over the last 60 years ie. Cheaper to make processed foods ie More profit
- advertising especially psychologically asculpted advertising
- less physical activity dt. Variou reasons
IMO it is extremely unlikely that a substantial proportion of obese people have "a hormonal imbalance" ( unless you mean one created by the excess adipose tissue, altered probiotic balance with subsequent host hormonal effects in a positive feedback loop etc).
If you really want to lose weight, and you have enough resolve, then cutting out all sugar and processed foods and eating a whole plant food diet with a mixture of hiit and weight training will bring people to a good weight in (I'll make an educated guess) 95% of cases.
The problem, as I see it, is that food corporations aRe doing everything they can to addict people to their processed foods, people are doing less exercise/movement on average, and these are becoming culturally ingrained.
"hormonal imbalance" - gt your doctor to do a blood test and check tfts, fsh/lh, hba1c etc In the vast majority of cases, it will not be a "hormonal imbalance" and I have to question why you want to think this.
Less "blame" on theindividual?
I think the solution is
- good education from a young age
- change corporate actions
- change the culture
Obviously, difficult, though we can all find good information for an individual level.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05026
https://www.festiwalbiegowy.pl/sites/default/files/upload/re... - zrodlo.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155041311...
Here’s a CDC study showing that there is a long term trend of people getting more exercise even as obesity rates rise: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/EarlyRelease...
My broader point is that, yes, external factors like low activity lifestyles and a diet that contains too much processed food are contributors. But what they are contributing to is an internal mechanism as well. Explain why some rail thin people get no exercise and eat nothing but garbage? Why do some fat people eat whole foods based diets and get daily exercise, but persist in being fat? When people regain weight, why do they tend to regress back to their original weight range, but not continue beyond that? Why has modern medicine been relatively unable to treat obesity until we started injecting GLP-1 hormone analogues? Why has saturated fat consumption been dropping as obesity has been rising? Why has refined sugar consumption been dropping with no effect on obesity?
The science on root causes of obesity are evolving quite a bit. I would hope you are more open minded to hearing from your patients and experts in the field. Treat your obese patients with more dignity, and don’t treat their condition like it is a moral failing, or something entirely within their control. Talk to your patients about the level of effort some of them go towards losing weight. You might be shocked to learn the amount of literal blood, sweat and tears expended, and how much their efforts are seemingly in vain. Everyone, not just doctors, know that eat less, eat better, exercise more is the recommended way to lose weight. But it just doesn’t work in the long term.
You think your trash never ends up where it's not supposed to. There is literally no reason to believe this other than to reserve a position for yourself in the judgement of others.
If we can outlaw plastic straws and bags we should outlaw plastic filters.
Which it does. Into little pieces. Quite annoying.
It also drives up the cost of healthcare, which because of insurance or socialized healthcare we all pay more for (either higher premiums or higher taxes).
> These filter tips are designed without plastic, they are biodegradable according to NF EN14995 norm and disintegrate in water (in particular seas and oceans).
What % of these Top 100 Cigarette Filter products are biodegradable? https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/hpc/10342496011/
Clear cellulose papers exist and are bidegradeable. Many products made from algae is biodegradable.
Unbleached hemp cigarette filters exist but only for slims?
There should be a law: cigarettes and their filters may only be made of unbleached biodegradables.
I don't drop litter and I wish nobody else would but the focus on cigarettes is just baffling. It seems to be driven by anti-smoking campaigners who have latched on to the "most common litter" and don't actually care about litter in general.
I’m not sure whether it is the press coverage that implies that this is a highly practical solution, or if the actual makers claim that too. But I look at it as a clever maker hack, not a commercial product which should be picked apart as flawed.
So it will create more waste than it will ever dispose of.
> not a commercial product which should be picked apart as flawed.
This is hacker news. It does not matter if your product is "commercial" or not. If it has flaws, they will be discussed here, we are not obligated to be cheerleaders for ideological solutioneering.
They're also completely insignificant, and actually make the problem worse, because it addresses the problem where people see it, which is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total problem.
Same with the highly publicized "man cleans up _____ and collects ___ bags of trash at park/beach, yay humanity!" stories. Media are pushed by plastics companies to cover these "feel good stories" because it implies that the problem can and should be addressed by citizen efforts like that. "Why if we all did that, we'd solve plastic pollution" seems to be the problem. It also sort of implies that if we had a lot more people like Mr. Good Guy Greg Litter Remover, the problem would be solved - when plastic is distributed pervasively through the entire ecosystem.
Can't clean up the millions of tons of plastic floating at all levels of the ocean, sitting on the ocean floor, in the stomachs of marine wildlife, etc.
This robot dog is like driving half-way across the country to spit on a wildfire and then calling up a bunch of news stations to tell them how you helped.
Not to mention all the resources consumed building the stupid thing that could have gone towards carbon and greenhouse gas reduction. Really, this is just some CS / robotics lab's vanity project.
Video of it in "action": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8BqvAe-moI
A video for the robot points out that ~3.5 trillion cigarettes are thrown into the ocean (and just the ocean!) per year.
If I'm going to assume that most babies, some children, and a few third world people do not smoke at all, and round it down to 3.5 billion smokers alive in the world today, you're saying that every single smoker throws 3 cigarettes into the ocean (just the ocean, not counting landfills) every single day?
But in Singapore they also pay people to sweep the streets, because despite the laws, trash still will accumulate. Note that Singapore also doesn’t have a minimum wage which means people can be paid a low amount to clean the streets.
In the U.S. we don’t enforce littering laws, and we also mostly don’t pay people to sweep streets. So we have very dirty streets.
What a robot can do is work for very low cost to clean up streets. Far below minimum wage.
This is a myth. You won't get caned for littering, though you'll be fined and possibly made to sweep the streets as part of community service. See: https://singaporelegaladvice.com/law-articles/littering-offe...
The 110% rule would be sustainable for a long, long time.
So not sure why this is some sort of innovation…
How do the sifting machines differentiate between cigarette butts and little sticks/rocks/pieces of driftwood &c?
If this dog vacuum thing is not too noisy and can unobtrusively navigate an area it seems like it might be a pleasant "always on" addition. I used to work a maintenance job where I'd show up at 1am and sweep up dozens of cigarette butts from the parking lot. Then I'd pop back out around dawn and there'd be a dozen new ones! It really is a constant and ongoing issue.
Perhaps the robot could monitor the area for active smokers and just go over and offer up an ash tray.
Also does anyone know a good programmable outdoor robot dog made in US?
Then there is the mechanics. Aside from mobility, consider a grasping arm's many servos and wiring harness vs. electric motor goes brr for the vacuum.
Hell, I'm willing to contribute to the open source repo
Source: Born and raised. :)
Even better, following you around for a while, still growling.
I've thought about this when I see bottles and other crap strewn on the streets or in parks.
Then I see a garbage can nearby that's been tipped over by someone, or an animal, or the wind.
A cigarette butt or bottle on the ground doesn't mean the person who bought it and used it tossed it on the ground. It could mean they put it in the designated garbage and someone came along and strew garbage everywhere.
There's been bipedal robot soccer games for a long time.
Are they automated? No.
Is this unlikely to repay its own costs? Unlikely.
Is it cool proof of concept and something that could be deployed somewhere remote for odd reasons? Sort of
Robot manages maybe 1 butt per 10 seconds
It would take over a million of these working 24x7 to get the job done.
* https://www.greenmatters.com/p/crows-cigarette-butts
* https://qz.com/1353949/crows-have-been-trained-to-pick-up-tr...
Also - https://www.npr.org/2008/03/04/87878028/inventor-trains-crow...