Beach robot on the move during World Cleanup Day

During World Cleanup Day on September 19, citizens were encouraged to clean up waste in their street and surroundings. In The Hague, participants on the beach received help from BeachBot, a robot that can recognize and clean up small waste.

Students of the Minor Robotics, one of the minors of the 3mE faculty, contributed to the development of the BeachBot. This robot uses artificial intelligence. With the help of a game, the self-learning robot is trained via an image recognition algorithm. In the case of unknown waste, the robot places a photo with a GPS tag in an app. Users of the app can indicate what kind of waste it concerns, so that the robot can identify this in the future. In this way he learns to recognize more and more waste. The students are working towards a proof-of-principle, which they will present in January 2021.

With Project.BB, startup TechTics wants to draw attention to the litter problem. Edwin Bos, CMO at TechTics: “A lot is already being done by the province, municipality and volunteers to tackle litter. It is cool to see that the robot that we are developing with a lot of help can already contribute a bit. The Municipality of The Hague is the first partner and they support our experiments in their "Living Lab" Scheveningen. The robot is also available for experiments in other municipalities and field labs.”

Saskia Bruines, Councilor for Economy, International and Services for the Municipality of The Hague: “With the innovations we are testing in Scheveningen, we are working towards new and smart solutions for a liveable city. The developers of the beach robot can experiment in a difficult environment and learn by trial and error. This new knowledge is shared with the municipality and residents and is very valuable for the future ”.