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.
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.
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?
"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.
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.