Concept: Florida’s 4Ocean has partnered with global marine enterprise Poralu Marine to launch BeBot, a beach cleaning robot engineered to salvage coastal plastic debris. The solar-powered robot is particularly apt in helping clean up smaller plastic waste.
Nature of Disruption: The BeBot, which is powered by electricity, can clean up to 3,000 square meters of beach each hour, which is 20 to 30 times faster than gathering garbage on the beach by hand. The robot, which is agile and simple to handle, excels at collecting small particles of plastic and other garbage that are notoriously difficult to clean by hand, according to the manufacturer, by utilizing small 1 cm x 1 cm sifting grids to separate these things from the sand. The BeBot’s smaller footprint and shallower cleaning depth of 10 cm successfully remove typical beach debris while minimizing disturbances to adjacent ecosystems and wildlife, making cleanups more effective and sustainable. The robot is controlled remotely and can be utilized daily by an operator up to 950 feet away. It is less likely to disturb animals or beachgoers since it works on batteries attached to a solar panel, is quieter, and is considerably smaller. When the machine is full, someone must sift the contents to separate recyclable plastic and garbage from elements that may be recycled back into the sand.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Outlook: According to the firm and experts, the robot is needed since the coastlines are now so polluted that cleaning them with human labor alone would be nearly impossible. There is a lot of tiny garbage that is hard for people to see, such as smaller packets, cigarette butts, or microplastics, in addition to bigger pieces of rubbish like plastic water bottles or food packaging. The robot can help 4Ocean achieve its target of removing 20 million pounds of garbage by the end of 2021. For many years, the its key objective has been to build an economy based on ocean cleanup, with an emphasis on plastic consumption.
