[HN Gopher] Robot dog cleans up beaches with foot-mounted vacuums
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Robot dog cleans up beaches with foot-mounted vacuums
Author : zdw
Score : 90 points
Date : 2024-07-20 12:18 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| taneq wrote:
| I can't believe it's more practical to use a robot quadruped than
| a rover with big soft tyres. This is cool but it's gonna be a
| maintenance nightmare.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It looks like a university project? These usually start with
|
| Step 1: I would like to have a cool robot.
|
| Step 2: How do I plausibly justify cool robot?
|
| Everyone knows cool robots have legs, not wheels.
| taneq wrote:
| Exactly. A project from a legged robotics research group, no
| less. Wheels or tracks would be boringly pragmatic in
| comparison.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't know, Curiosity, Perseverance, Sojourner, Spirit, and
| Opportunity are all pretty cool. Perseverance even had a
| helicopter robot buddy.
|
| No legs. Just wheels. You might need to tweak your "cool"
| setting. You might be too aggressively filtering out some
| cool things
| bee_rider wrote:
| They get automatic cool points by virtue of being launched
| to another planet.
| fhd2 wrote:
| The article mentions stair climbing as a requirement, not sure
| I buy that.
|
| Even wheeled robots can climb stairs with the right platform, I
| think that's still cheaper, less complex and error prone.
|
| But from a pragmatic perspective, it sounds like a very
| reasonable tradeoff to simply not support stair climbing. It's
| not like that thing is gonna walk itself from the workshop to
| the target area. If someone has to carry it anyway, they could
| conceivably carry it down some stairs while at it.
|
| (I'm a rather incompetent hobbyist when it comes to robotics,
| but I've been researching locomotion quite a bit and find a
| wheeled platform to be a good choice even in the forest
| environments I focus on. Guess it's just not exciting enough.)
| kleiba wrote:
| _The article mentions stair climbing as a requirement, not
| sure I buy that._
|
| Agreed. That requirement seems to be at odds with the premise
| of _cleaning up beaches_.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| 1. Stair climbing isn't just about movement from top to
| bottom. Stairs are a common place where people drop litter.
| Cleaning litter on the stairs isn't accomplished by carrying
| the robot down the stairs.
|
| 2. Why do you believe the robot will always have a minder?
| The objective very much would be setting these off from a
| central location and covering a whole neighborhood or city.
| fhd2 wrote:
| If the point is to clean beaches and that's it, I think my
| points hold. Sure, there are stairs on some beaches, but
| it's not really any significant percentage of the space to
| be cleaned up, thus not really worth optimising for IMHO.
|
| If the point is to _start_ with beaches and to then use the
| same platform to clean up all kinds of yet to be determined
| areas, a quadruped might indeed be one of the few viable
| options. Wheeled robots can climb stairs with the right
| platform, but I wouldn't argue they can traverse arbitrary
| terrain the way quadrupeds can.
|
| Personally, when designing robots, I have very clear tasks
| and constraints in mind, making conscious tradeoffs. But
| I'm a software developer, that's how we do things. It's
| perhaps not how professional roboticists do things.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Well it works on stairs...
| ryaneager wrote:
| > The challenge is that most of that automation relies on
| mobility systems with wheels, which won't work on the many
| beautiful beaches (and many beautiful flights of stairs) of
| Genoa.
|
| From the 3rd paragraph. Also Spot is an already developed robot
| platform, and it's much simpler to use that than make a robot
| from scratch.
| pcrh wrote:
| I suspect the project has broader goals, but presenting it as
| solving a problem familiar to most (i.e. litter) is mostly for
| the exposure that would bring.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Poor fella gonna be abducted and repurposed as a rentable
| pleasure robot.
| Moon_Y wrote:
| It's mind-blowing. I never imagined that robotic dogs could be
| used for such purposes.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| How does it not vacuum up tons of pebbles and sand at the same
| time?
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| This is probably EU innovation funds at work. Still impressing
| that they assembled something resembling a functional
| prototype, and not only gigabytes of PDFs and DOCXs.
| geor9e wrote:
| That's probably why they never show it on sand - it would suck
| it up. Things with the highest surface-to-mass ratio would make
| it to the top of the vertical tubes -- things like dust,
| cigarette butts, and candy wrappers. Pebbles have too low of a
| surface-to-mass ratio to get sucked all the way up the vertical
| tube.
| ape4 wrote:
| Rover could "eat" garbage with its robo-snout.
| retrac wrote:
| That might be okay. Sand can be sifted and gravel and cigarette
| butts separate by density with shaking the container. Sand and
| pebbles can then be returned to beach. (Sand depletion is a
| concern in many areas.). Robo-dog could return to a dock which
| automates part of that separation process. Then return the sand
| to the same spot. Cleaning might be a concern (spreading spores
| of invasive species) if used in different areas.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| I'm a person who never throws cigarette butts, chewing gums, or
| shit with my dog all over the place. This is an entire domain of
| problems and solutions which shouldn't even exist.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, we should invent robots to vacuum those offenders.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| https://images.amcnetworks.com/ifccenter.com/wp-
| content/uplo...
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| True. It's the same with projects like 'The Ocean Cleanup'. In
| Mainland China there's an army of underpaid elderly street
| sweepers earning basically nothing (2k RMB/month), who
| constantly clean up after folks mindlessly dropping their trash
| on the streets. Or take the craze around drugs like semaglutide
| (Ozempic) in the West. Technologists constantly come up with
| solutions that directly or indirectly support immoral behavior
| and unsustainable lifestyles.
|
| I'm not saying let's not have robots cleaning up. But first of
| all, before we look to such solutions, litterers should be
| fined to high heaven. Make it sting, so that these people don't
| even think about doing it anymore. Make it day fines, based on
| the person's income. They will learn to keep beaches clean that
| way.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| > Or take the craze around drugs like semaglutide (Ozempic)
| in the West. Technologists constantly come up with solutions
| that directly or indirectly support immoral behavior and
| unsustainable lifestyles.
|
| Why the dig at obesity?
|
| If there's anything we are learning from GLP-1 medications,
| it is that, for many, weight control is not a moral failing.
| Many of these people will have spent thousands on coaching,
| gyms, nutrition plans, counselling, and any other option to
| try to lose weight the 'hard' way. Literal blood sweat and
| tears. Statistically, those interventions don't work well in
| the long term. Plenty of the morally unimpeachable suffer
| from weight issues. Clearly there is a physiological
| component as well. This medication treats it.
|
| Is it also a moral failing to take a Tylenol to treat a
| hangover headache instead of suffering through the pain until
| it goes away? Maybe surgery patients should just tough it
| out, without anesthesia like they used to in the 1800s
| instead of taking the easy way out?
|
| People are treated for 'self-inflicted' physical issues
| constantly. Why are you picking on overweight ones?
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Ozempic was approved in the US for treatment for type 2
| diabetes, but over a third of users are taking it off-
| label, they have no history of diabetes1. Of course one can
| phrase it in a way that makes it sound like they're
| suffering from a disease and are getting the "medication"
| they need. Would you say the same about folks using benzos
| off-label though?
|
| We use positive language (medication) or negative (drug
| abuse) depending on the picture we want to paint. The point
| is these are examples of things that shouldn't exist,
| because for most of us who're healthy and able bodied, we
| can take our trash and throw it in a bin. And we don't need
| to inject drugs, we should better train to be disciplined
| and eat less. Obesity in places like the US is mainly
| cultural. By trying to solve the problem with technology
| instead of changing the attitude towards health, they will
| only become more dependent on drugs.
|
| 1 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/27/health/semaglutide-
| equita...
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Semaglutide for weight loss isn't off label. Using
| Semaglutide in the Ozempic auto-dispenser is off-label.
| Using it in a different syringe sold under the name
| Wegovy is the only difference. Same drug, different
| packaging. It is the exact same medication, delivered via
| injection, except one is sold in a fancier syringe.
|
| Either way, off-label usage of drugs doesn't bother me.
| If someone is using off-label Benzodiazepines as an
| effective treatment under the supervision of a competent
| doctor, that seems like a good thing. Sometimes I use
| bandaids to protect against blisters even though the
| packaging doesn't indicate that usage. It isn't a moral
| failing to get an effective use out of something that
| wasn't designed for it?
|
| > Obesity in places like the US is mainly cultural. By
| trying to solve the problem with technology instead of
| changing the attitude towards health, they will only
| become more dependent on drugs.
|
| What you aren't grasping is that actual experts don't see
| it this way. The use of Semaglutide points to the fact
| that obesity is caused, at least in part, by a hormonal
| imbalance. How is culture unbalancing hormones? Experts
| still don't understand why so many people in some areas
| are affected. Actual scientists have done controlled
| studies and found that culturally similar people in
| different geographies have wildly varying rates of
| obesity. We live in a culture, where (as you have proven)
| people will openly judge, insult and shame strangers for
| being fat. Being fat isn't culturally accepted anywhere
| (maybe a few isolated cultures are the exception). Nobody
| wants to be fat. There is a multi-billion dollar industry
| that serves people doing everything they can to NOT be
| fat, and it is notoriously ineffective.
|
| If being dependent on pharmaceutical intervention is what
| it takes to help people live longer, more independent
| lives, that costs society less in the long run, then
| that's fine. We happily accept lifelong pharmaceutical
| dependency for a range of conditions, including ones that
| are purely quality of life related. Do you go around
| telling burn victims that cosmetic reconstructive surgery
| is a moral failing?
|
| I understand that lifestyle affects weight. "Eat less and
| exercise more". Every fat person already knows this.
| People who have the willpower to get PHDs, to run
| successful companies, to do every difficult thing in
| life, fail at losing weight and keeping it off. Being fat
| is not a moral failing.
|
| Its like telling depressed people to cheer up. It doesn't
| work, and it isn't a moral failing to have clinical
| depression. Lifestyle choices can affect depression, and
| it is treatable without medication sometimes. But
| oftentimes pharmaceutical interventions are the best
| option.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| We've tried to change attitude around obesity, exercise,
| eating habits, etc. We should keep trying, but let's not
| pretend it's a new, unchallenged issue. Changing the
| culture of a country is hard.
| colordrops wrote:
| Yes. There should be a robot that tazes people that throw
| cigarette butts on the ground.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Gravity exists. It causes things to fall over. Wind exists. It
| blows trash around. Garbage trucks have items fall over the
| side. Accidents happen.
|
| You think your trash never ends up where it's not supposed to.
| There is literally no reason to believe this other than to
| reserve a position for yourself in the judgement of others.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Come to Canada. Be with your people.
| kleiba wrote:
| Vacuums use a lot of power - I wonder how long the batteries
| last, especially since the average beach is a lot bigger than
| your standard living room.
| feeblewitz wrote:
| It's also using hydraulics which are a big power drain.
| retrac wrote:
| It would only need to be pulsed when a cigarette is located.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > Preventing those cigarette butts from winding up on the ground
| in the first place would be the best option
|
| If we can outlaw plastic straws and bags we should outlaw plastic
| filters.
| riffraff wrote:
| I don't think this would matter, cigarette butts would still be
| unpleasant even if they'd decompose, much like biodegradable
| bags are still bad to find around.
| manmal wrote:
| The problem biodegradable plastics solve is microplastic that
| accumulates in our bodies, ocean etc. People still have to
| dispose of them properly of course, because it can still take
| years for a whole bag to dissolve.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I thought most biodegradable plastic bags were just plastic
| bits, alternating with biodegradable bits, so the bags fall
| apart but the plastic still exists in little pieces?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You're describing post-consumer plastics which blend
| recycled content with virgin. Biodegradable plastics are
| not blends.
| tail_exchange wrote:
| I don't really care what people do with their lungs, so whether
| they want to smoke or not, that's their problem. That being said,
| I definitely have an issue with smokers who think it's ok to
| throw cigarette butts on the ground. It's crazy how we still
| allow non-biodegradable cigarette filters to exist.
| genter wrote:
| Have you ever stood next to someone while they smoke?
| tail_exchange wrote:
| How is this relevant? I didn't say we should allow smoking
| everywhere, or that smokers don't need to exercise basic
| courtesy when they are around non-smokers. I said it's not my
| business whether someone else decides to be a smoker or not.
| 1992spacemovie wrote:
| You're approaching HN discussions in a clear, linear
| fashion. You can't do that. You gotta be more autistic.
| tail_exchange wrote:
| Jokes aside, the level of discourse on HN is miles ahead
| places like Reddit and Twitter. HN's comment section is
| fantastic compared to them.
| cko wrote:
| You don't even have to stand next to them. They could smoke
| on their balconies several stories down and it'll drift
| through your bedroom window.
| hempfilters wrote:
| E.g. OCB Eco filter tips are 100% biodegradable :
|
| > _These filter tips are designed without plastic, they are
| biodegradable according to NF EN14995 norm and disintegrate in
| water (in particular seas and oceans)._
|
| What % of these Top 100 Cigarette Filter products are
| biodegradable?
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/hpc/10342496011/
|
| Clear cellulose papers exist and are bidegradeable. Many
| products made from algae is biodegradable.
|
| Unbleached hemp cigarette filters exist but only for slims?
|
| There should be a law: cigarettes and their filters may only be
| made of unbleached biodegradables.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Looks to me like this is an innovation fund project which
| demonstrates a cool idea. Most of the comments here are
| complaining about practical issues but I don't believe running
| this thing all day long on a public beach is the primary goal.
|
| I'm not sure whether it is the press coverage that implies that
| this is a highly practical solution, or if the actual makers
| claim that too. But I look at it as a clever maker hack, not a
| commercial product which should be picked apart as flawed.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > but I don't believe running this thing all day long on a
| public beach is the primary goal.
|
| So it will create more waste than it will ever dispose of.
|
| > not a commercial product which should be picked apart as
| flawed.
|
| This is hacker news. It does not matter if your product is
| "commercial" or not. If it has flaws, they will be discussed
| here, we are not obligated to be cheerleaders for ideological
| solutioneering.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Even if you ran it once a week, or once a month, that might be
| worthwhile on its own.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I hate splitting / magic bullet fallacies as much as the next
| guy, but the problem with these sorts of efforts is that they
| re-cast public perception of who is responsible for creating
| the problem, taxing the producers/consumers to pay for the
| costs they are incurring to society so that it is not
| economically feasible to produce "disposable" materials that
| never break down, getting them to stop, and holding them
| responsible for cleanup.
|
| They're also completely insignificant, and actually make the
| problem worse, because it addresses the problem where people
| see it, which is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total problem.
|
| Same with the highly publicized "man cleans up _____ and
| collects ___ bags of trash at park/beach, yay humanity!"
| stories. Media are pushed by plastics companies to cover these
| "feel good stories" because it implies that the problem can and
| should be addressed by citizen efforts like that. "Why if we
| all did that, we'd solve plastic pollution" seems to be the
| problem. It also sort of implies that if we had a lot more
| people like Mr. Good Guy Greg Litter Remover, the problem would
| be solved - when plastic is distributed pervasively through the
| entire ecosystem.
|
| Can't clean up the millions of tons of plastic floating at all
| levels of the ocean, sitting on the ocean floor, in the
| stomachs of marine wildlife, etc.
|
| This robot dog is like driving half-way across the country to
| spit on a wildfire and then calling up a bunch of news stations
| to tell them how you helped.
|
| Not to mention all the resources consumed building the stupid
| thing that could have gone towards carbon and greenhouse gas
| reduction. Really, this is just some CS / robotics lab's vanity
| project.
|
| Video of it in "action":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8BqvAe-moI
|
| A video for the robot points out that ~3.5 trillion cigarettes
| are thrown into the ocean (and just the ocean!) per year.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| 3.5 trillion?
|
| If I'm going to assume that most babies, some children, and a
| few third world people do not smoke at all, and round it down
| to 3.5 billion smokers alive in the world today, you're
| saying that every single smoker throws 3 cigarettes into the
| ocean (just the ocean, not counting landfills) every single
| day?
| janalsncm wrote:
| It is possible to dramatically reduce littering. Singapore
| has strict littering punishments. You don't see a lot of
| litter on the ground. Of course caning people for littering
| isn't a very popular policy in most countries.
|
| But in Singapore they also pay people to sweep the streets,
| because despite the laws, trash still will accumulate. Note
| that Singapore also doesn't have a minimum wage which means
| people can be paid a low amount to clean the streets.
|
| In the U.S. we don't enforce littering laws, and we also
| mostly don't pay people to sweep streets. So we have very
| dirty streets.
|
| What a robot can do is work for very low cost to clean up
| streets. Far below minimum wage.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| We already have beach cleaning machines that sift the sand
| which are far more effective and cheaper than this.
|
| So not sure why this is some sort of innovation...
| kumarm wrote:
| Instead of using vacuum why not collect with with finger like
| extensions to use less power and better accuracy?
|
| Also does anyone know a good programmable outdoor robot dog made
| in US?
| bagels wrote:
| That is probably a lot slower, more difficult to implement and
| would require even more power for the control system.
| tempest_ wrote:
| Boston Dynamics has a contact sales button on their site aha
| NBJack wrote:
| Articulation is _much_ more complex. You go from "vacuum thing
| I found that looks like trash" to "create a 3D model of this
| scene, route the robotic appendage thru it, find the ideal
| grasping point at center of mass, make first attempt,
| compensate for shift due to wind/previous attempt..." etc.
|
| Then there is the mechanics. Aside from mobility, consider a
| grasping arm's many servos and wiring harness vs. electric
| motor goes brr for the vacuum.
| seydor wrote:
| I would like something liek this with a gripper or something to
| pick up garbage. I m sure somebody is working on it
| cromulent wrote:
| Using technology to effectively solve market externalities is a
| good thing.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| does it also find lost jewelry?
| gcheong wrote:
| I think the best test for general AI will be to invent a robot
| that can clean up after a dog.
| sema4hacker wrote:
| We need a bigger version, not necessarily a vacuum, to clean up
| roadside litter.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Then what would all of those people working off their community
| service hours do?
| standardUser wrote:
| Does it benefit from having four legs, other than to make it look
| unnervingly doglike? It seems like a robot spider might be more
| efficient, if not also more terrifying.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Or wheels.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| I can envision better uses for robot spiders if we want to
| disincentivize littering.
|
| Hell, I'm willing to contribute to the open source repo
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Can we deploy these in Puerto Rico? Some beaches are worse than
| others.
|
| Source: Born and raised. :)
| astromaniak wrote:
| For every dog like this you can probably hire two locals. But
| what's the point if you throw collected garbage back into
| ocean.
| floam wrote:
| Article starts off "Thanks to VERO, Genoa has fewer cigarette
| butts littering the ground" but I doubt this has been designed to
| be deployed at scale, beyond demonstrations.
| Timshel wrote:
| It's so slow and noisy I would prefer to keep the cigarettes
| butts rather than have this close by ...
| sgu999 wrote:
| Probably not as efficient in all aspects as giving a 10kEUR fine
| to anyone caught littering.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Imagine this thing growling menacingly at you if it saw you
| littering... on some people, that would work better than a
| fine.
|
| Even better, following you around for a while, still growling.
| create-account wrote:
| cigarettes should have serial numbers written on them, tied to
| the drug addict in question at the counter: this user is
| purchasing this serial number. Cleaning services could easily
| report any drug evidence and report it to the authorities
| silenced_trope wrote:
| I don't think that would work.
|
| I've thought about this when I see bottles and other crap
| strewn on the streets or in parks.
|
| Then I see a garbage can nearby that's been tipped over by
| someone, or an animal, or the wind.
|
| A cigarette butt or bottle on the ground doesn't mean the
| person who bought it and used it tossed it on the ground. It
| could mean they put it in the designated garbage and someone
| came along and strew garbage everywhere.
| yencabulator wrote:
| > the first time that the legs of a legged robot are concurrently
| utilized for locomotion and for a different task
|
| There's been bipedal robot soccer games for a long time.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Are there better beach cleaning machines? Yes.
|
| Are they automated? No.
|
| Is this unlikely to repay its own costs? Unlikely.
|
| Is it cool proof of concept and something that could be deployed
| somewhere remote for odd reasons? Sort of
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