BeBot Is a Remote-Controlled Beach Rover for Clearing Small Trash and Debris From Sand

Many of the world’s popular beaches, idyllic from afar, turn out to be spotted with cigarette butts and litter — unfortunate evidence of the tourists they draw. Clean-up of such small debris involves painstaking sifting through the sands in search of the small filters. In particular, cigarette butts can take up to fourteen years to disintegrate, and when touched by water, they leach more than thirty chemicals classified as “very toxic” into the aquatic environment. These concerns have spawned a few efforts to more carefully and efficiently maintain coastlines. The BeBot, built by marine infrastructure manufacturer Poralu Marine, is a rover capable of cleaning up beaches with minimal disruption to delicate coastal ecosystems. A similar project built by TechTics, known as BeachBot or BB, is a prototype bot that uses artificial intelligence to learn how to better find the litter, even when it is partially buried in the sand.

Unlike both the labor-intensive manual approach to beach cleaning and the use of heavy-duty machinery that can destroy flora and fauna and erode the landscape, BeBot’s method is both quick and gentle. Running on a combination of solar and battery power, it digs up to four inches into the sand and mechanically sifts the grains through a mech screen, gathering plastics and other litter as small as a centimeter squared. It is remotely controlled by a human operator, with a range of up to 300 meters or 984 feet. In demonstrations, the prototype has been able to clean up to 32,000 square feet of beach per hour, depending on the topography, and has an agile track system that allows it to maneuver in tight areas.

The AI system that BeachBot was trained on focused specifically on cigarette butts, as it was shown thousands of photos of cigarette butts lying in various states in the sand. The photos were amassed via Microsoft Trove, an app that connects AI developers with photo takers. Once BB spots a filter, it lowers to gripper arms to grab and lift it into an internal bin. The bot does all of the manual labor, sifting through gallons of sand a day, but it relies on human-robot interaction to make it more able and efficient. The project reduces the human labor needed for beach cleanups but ideally keeps the community connected to the effort. As people collect images for the project, they also raise awareness about the debris.

The two projects have high hopes for the future of coastal environments, although they may not be final solutions. TechTics is focusing on building two smaller “helper” bots to spot cigarettes and map their locations while BB responds to their requests for removal. Poralu Marine’s project is in testing on the beaches of Florida, but they soon plan to send BeBots to Hawaii to assist with cleanup efforts on the islands.

Last time at the beach, I was practically playing twister to avoid old masks, food, and smokes too. I want these bots everywhere out there!