‘Coastal waters all over the world are polluted with litter, such as pieces of plastic, bottles or tyres. At the moment divers are cleaning up this waste from the seabed, especially in tourist areas. However, this is an expensive solution and can sometimes pose dangers for divers,’ says professor Bart De Schutter from @tudelftCenter for Systems and Control. ‘That’s why we’ve joined forces with seven other partners in the SeaClear project to develop an autonomous system using underwater robots to remove waste from the seabed. And important to say, we are careful not to affect life on the seabed.’
‘The SeaClear system works as follows,’ continues project leader De Schutter. ‘We have a surface vessel on the water and two underwater robots. The somewhat smaller robot is the observation robot. It scans the seabed with a camera and sonar. This robot maps out where the litter is located and what kind of waste it is. Once the observation robot has identified litter, it sends this information to the other underwater robot, which is equipped with a gripper. This robot goes to the litter and picks it up with the gripper and deposits it into a large basket. The gripper is designed with a frame structure so fish can easily escape when being picked up by accident. The robot can also distinguish between litter and aquatic life, such as fish and seaweed. We use advanced algorithms to make this distinction.’
Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering (3mE)
👉 Interested in AI?
Go to: [ Ссылка ] 💫
Or join us on social media
✅ LinkedIn: TU Delft AI | [ Ссылка ]...
✅ Twitter: @TUDelft_AI | [ Ссылка ]
