Meijer deploys BeBot, Pixie Drone to clean up the beaches of the Great Lakes

-
bebot robot

The Bebot robot can clean 32,000 square feet of beach per hour. | Source: Meijer

Meijer, a midwestern retailer, is using the BeBot and Pixie Drone to clean up midwestern beaches and waterways. The project is part of Meijer’s participation in the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup Program. Meijer is collaborating with the Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR) on the project.

The BeBot is a remote-controlled beach cleaning robot that has a cleaning capacity of 32,000 square feet per hour. The solar and battery-powered robot rakes through sand without making changes to the beach environment, collecting plastic litter and other waste. Things like bottles, cans, food wrappers and cigarette butts are gathered into a basket for disposal and recycling.

The Pixie Drone is a remote-controlled water drone capable of collecting up to 200 lbs of material per use. The drone navigates through busy marinas and other waterways to collect plastic litter and other debris floating on the surface of the water. While the Pixie Drone cleans, it also collects water data like temperature, pH, salinity, turbidity and dissolved oxygen.

Meijer kicked off the project earlier this week with a press conference at Pere Marquette Beach in Muskegon, MI. There, the company did a live demonstration of the robots. Representatives from the Grand Valley State University Annis Water Resources Institute (GVSU-AWRI) will operate the robots along the Muskegon lakeshore.

“Microplastics have become one of the most pressing issues facing our waterways, both in the Great Lakes and on a global scale; we are both excited and honored to be part of Meijer’s initiative to fund new technologies to address this problem,” Dr. Al Steinman, the Allen and Helen Hunting Research Professor at GVSU-AWRI, said. “It is critical to resolve the microplastic dilemma, not only for the ecology of our local waters but also for the economy of our coastal communities, who visit and recreate on our beaches and lakes with the expectation that they are clean and pollutant-free. The BeBot and Pixie Drone will help ensure those expectations are met.”

The deployment is part of the expansion of the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup’s plastic capture and recovery effort, which was started in 2020 by the CGLR and Pollution Probe. The BeBot and Pixie Drones were funded by a $1 million donation Meijer made to the charitable arm of the CGLR in the US, the CGLR Foundation.

The post Meijer deploys BeBot, Pixie Drone to clean up the beaches of the Great Lakes appeared first on The Robot Report.



from The Robot Report - Robotics News, Analysis & Research https://ift.tt/RiLQgDK
via artificialconference

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chipotle testing avocado processing robot in test kitchen

-
Image
Chipotle Mexican Grill announced Autocado, an avocado processing cobotic prototype that cuts, cores, and peels avocados before they are hand mashed to create the restaurant’s famous guacamole. The prototype, developed in collaboration with Vebu , is currently being tested at the Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine , California.  How Autocado works  A team member loads Autocado with a full case of ripe avocados and selects the size setting. Autocado can hold up to 25 lbs. of avocados at once. One at a time, avocados are vertically oriented, then transferred to the processing device. The avocados are sliced in half. Their cores and skin are automatically removed, and the waste is discarded.  The fruit is safely collected in a stainless-steel bowl at the bottom of the device.  A team member removes the bowl of avocado fruit and moves it to the counter where they add additional ingredients and hand mash the avocados to make Chipotle’s signature guacamole.  How the Autocado idea s
Read more

Inside Comaus testing of Intrinsic Flowstate

-
Image
Intrinsic tested its latest platform and Flowstate with Comau , an Italian-based robot manufacturer and global systems integrator. Comau has been working with Intrinsic for several years now to validate Intrinsic’s platform technology and developer product, Flowstate, through real-world use cases.  Flowstate, announced earlier this year in May , is a robotic software development platform. It’s Intrinsic’s first developer product built on the Intrinsic platform. Comau was also introduced as the company’s first industry partner in May.  The Intrinsic Flowstate software  adds a layer of abstraction to traditional robotic software tools with the goal of reducing the development skillset required while making it easier than ever before to program a robot in simulation. “Partnering with Comau over the years has brought our team a tremendous amount of expertise, knowledge, and real-world use cases to focus our efforts on. We’re excited for what’s next and what it will mean to the solutio
Read more

ABB launches Flexley mobile robots, completing rebranding of ASTI AMRs

-
Image
Rebranded ABB Flexley autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) completes the integration of ASTI into ABB Robotics business. | Credit: ABB ABB launched its first range of rebranded Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) following its acquisition of mobile robot leader ASTI Mobile Robotics in 2021 for $190M . ASTI Mobile Robotics’ solutions are now rebranded and integrated into ABB’s portfolio, grouped under the Flexley name, indicating the flexibility of operations that the AMRs offer. The first rebranded models to be released, Flexley Tug and Flexley Mover, cover applications including towing, trolley transportation up to 5,350 lbs (2000 kg), as well as lifting and transporting racks, containers and pallets of 4,000 lbs (1,500 kg). The ABB Flexley Mover (l) and ABB Flexley Tug (r) become the first rebranded ABB AMRs to be released. | Credit: ABB ABB joins OMRON corporation as the second automation solutions company to offer a complete lineup of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), industrial robo
Read more