No Ifs, Ands, or Butts: This Robot Really Cleans Up

Robot vacuums are a bright spot in the world of domestic robotics. While we do not yet have practical robots that can do the cooking, laundry, and other chores that we would rather not do, robot vacuums have proven that they can do their job quite well. They are also very versatile — they can handle different floor plans without a hitch, and they can even clean a variety of flooring types.

But of course they have their limits. Once a robot vacuum makes it past the threshold of your front door, it is of little use. A team of researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology recognized that bringing robot vacuums out into the wider world could serve some important purposes, from cleaning up unsightly trash to removing toxic chemicals from the environment, so they set out to build one that was not confined to the home. In doing so, they focused on solving a problem that is rampant in their own backyard — cigarette butts littering the beach.

A staggering four trillion cigarette butts are estimated to be inappropriately discarded each year. And this is more than just an eyesore — hundreds of toxic chemicals leach out of these cigarettes into the environment, causing health problems for both humans and wildlife.

Putting a typical wheeled robot vacuum on the beach would clearly not go well. So the researchers built a solution, called VERO (Vacuum-cleaner Equipped RObot), that is a quadrupedal robot dog equipped with vacuums on each of its feet. The hardware design is very straightforward — an Aliengo robot dog from Unitree Robotics was outfitted with a commercial vacuum that was mounted on its back. Hoses run down each leg to a 3D-printed nozzle near each foot, positioned just above the ground.

Most of the engineering work went into designing the software that powers VERO. After being supplied with an area to cover, the robot then calculates the best path to take, while also locating cigarette butts using a computer vision algorithm. Once the robot is ready to vacuum up trash, an Intel RealSense depth camera is utilized to get a better view of the situation. This provides the detailed data needed to position VERO such that one of the legs can be moved into the right position to vacuum up the cigarette without becoming unstable and risking a fall.

Field tests showed that VERO was capable of collecting nearly 90 percent of cigarette butts within its assigned cleaning area. Moreover, it was also demonstrated that the robot could operate well beyond the beach. Similar success was observed in parks, wooded areas, and on sidewalks.

While VERO has already shown a lot of versatility in vacuuming up harmful waste, the team also believes that dual-purpose legs could be used for other important applications in the future. They envision future versions of the robot spraying weeds, inspecting infrastructure, and giving assistance to construction workers, for example.