Today’s show is about two droids walking around in sand. Hmm.
Summer is here, and one of the best places to go on a hot, sunny day is the beach.
Except that sometimes the beach is, well, messy.
Some people don’t always clean up after themselves the way they’re supposed to, and that litter and pollution can be hard to fully clean up.
There are several projects in the works trying to solve that problem in the modern way: robots!
Fast Company recently wrote about BeBot, it’s a solar-powered autonomous device that can sort out small plastics, litter and other debris from almost 30,000 square feet of beach each hour.
It does also pick up small pebbles and shells, which need to be sorted and removed with human help, but that still cuts down by a lot the time it takes to clean beach sands up.
BeBot is undergoing testing in Hawaii.
Meanwhile, designboom looked at two entrepreneurs who are developing BeachBot, or BB for short.
This one also rolls across the beach to do some cleaning.
In particular, it uses artificial intelligence to detect and remove stubbed-out cigarettes.
Still, if they want the true Roomba-style effect these robots need one more thing: viral videos of cats riding on top of them while they clean up.
Sometimes you have an itch that you just can’t reach.
Sunny the radiated tortoise had this problem at the Dallas Zoo, but thanks to intern Morgan Brem, there’s a solution.
It’s a homemade scratching station!
Sunny walks through and overhead brushes give him some long-awaited scratches.
This beach-cleaning robot sifts sand for the tiny plastics that humans miss (Fast Company)
BeachBot, an AI-powered robot that cleans cigarette butts at the beach (Designboom)
Watch This Lucky Tortoise Enjoy His Homemade Scatcher Device Crafted From Broom Heads (Good News Network)
You can join us as a backer on Patreon, or build a robot that backs us on Patreon if you prefer
