test

Tag: Sustainability

Fleets Of Wasteshark ‘Aquadrones’ Could Be Cleaning Ocean Waste In The Future

A swarm of autonomous robots that can swim across bodies of water to collect garbage might be the key to saving the oceans.  A few years ago, RanMarine Technology, a company from the Netherlands, has introduced WasteShark, an aquadrone that works like a smart vacuum cleaner (essentially, a Roomba for the seas) to gather wastes that end up in waterways before they accumulate into a great big patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Wall-E On Water

Every year, about 1.4 billion pounds of trash end up in the ocean. Plastics, styrofoam, and other nonbiodegradable materials get dumped into the waters, eaten by fishes and birds or collect into what has become the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a gyre of debris between California and Hawaii bigger than Alaska.

Trash in seas and oceans have become a huge problem, but the WasteShark might be able to help.

RanMarine said that its aquadrones are inspired by whale sharks, “nature’s most efficient harvesters of marine biomass.” The company claims that the vessels can collect up to 200 liters of waste before it needs to be emptied and swim across the water for 16 hours.

The WasteShark are autonomous as it can intelligently wade through water and collect trash using sensors. It is equipped with a GPS to track its movements.

Read the full article by Tech Times article

Gobbling up your marina problem

ROTTERDAM RanMarine Technology, a 4-year-old Dutch company, has a solution for marina operators for whom floating garbage is an unending pain-in-the-neck. The company has developed the WasteShark, an aquadrone that removes trash and nasty flora from the water.

The WasteShark works round-the-clock, gobbling up garbage floating around marinas and shipyard waters. It also records the water’s temperature, depth and oxygen content with a view to improving water management. Units are now running in pilot projects in the city of Rotterdam and the port of nearby Dordrecht. Commercial projects start soon in South Africa and India.

RanMarine Technology says its drones operate above all in locations where trash is known to collect “waste choke-holds” created by tides and weather. It does not recommend using them in shipping lanes or other high traffic areas.

The cost of sea litter in the European Union has been estimated at up to €630 million a year – mostly plastics.

Richard Hardiman, head of the WasteShark project calls himself “an accidental environmentalist.” He says one day he watched 2 men struggling to scoop litter from a harbor. It led him to develop an aqua drone that collects garbage in a basket,  powered by rechargeable batteries and relatively silent.

Garbage-collecting aqua drones and jellyfish filters for cleaner oceans

A Roomba-like ocean trash collector modelled on a whale shark and a microplastic filter made from jellyfish slime could prevent litter from entering our oceans and help tackle a growing problem that poses threats to wildlife, deters tourists and impacts on coastal economies.

The cost of sea litter in the EU has been estimated at up to €630 million per year. It is mostly composed of plastics, which take hundreds of years to break down in nature, and has the potential to affect human health through the food chain because plastic waste is eaten by the fish that we consume.

‘I’m an accidental environmentalist,’ said Richard Hardiman, who runs a project called WASTESHARK. He says that while walking at his local harbour one day he stopped to watch two men struggle to scoop litter out of the sea using a pool net. Their inefficiency bothered Hardiman, and he set about trying to solve the problem. It was only when he delved deeper into the issue that he realised how damaging marine litter, and plastic in particular, can be, he says.

‘I started exploring where this trash goes – ocean gyres (circular currents), junk gyres, and they’re just full of plastic. I’m very glad that we’re now doing something to lessen the effects,’ he said.

Hardiman developed an unmanned robot, an aqua drone that cruises around urban waters such as harbours, marinas and canals, eating up marine litter like a Roomba of the sea. The waste is collected in a basket which the WasteShark then brings back to shore to be emptied, sorted and recycled.

The design of the autonomous drone is modelled on a whale shark, the ocean’s largest known fish. These giant filter feeders swim around with their mouths open and lazily eat whatever crosses their path.

Read the full article by Horizon article

The accidental environmentalist – Richard Hardiman (TEDx event CapeTown)

Meet Richard Hardiman, the CEO of RanMarine Technology BV, an environmental technology company specifically focused on using drones in ports, harbours, marinas and inland water environments.

Meet Richard Hardiman, the CEO of RanMarine Technology BV, an environmental technology company specifically focused on using drones in ports, harbours, marinas and inland water environments.

RanMarine Technology’s fully autonomous drones swim through the water, collecting waste and other non-biodegradables, whilst gathering data about the environment.

We asked Hardiman what motivated him to agree to stand on stage at our next TEDxCapeTownSalon event, to which he responded: “I wanted to share our team’s journey and explain how we intend to change and help heal the Oceans through technology.” “I am inspired by people who do bigger things and play a “bigger game” in life”, and that feeds into what he hopes to achieve with this experience. “I want to…inspire others to think a little differently and perhaps also take that leap of faith”. Hardiman, a radio veteran, he not only hosted a show on KFM for many years but also co-founded 2oceansvibe Radio, confesses to feeling a bit nervous and a little stressed about his TEDx talk but adds that he’s “…ultimately looking forward to it”.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community

The original TEDx video can be found TEDx

Drones will clear our ocean trash

In 2014 Planet Earth produced 311 million tons of new plastic. 32% of it leaked into fragile ecosystems. 10-20 million tons reached the ocean, causing US$13 billion of environmental damage. California, Oregon and Washington alone spend $500 million annually clearing trash from their Pacific coastline.

WATER AND AIR, THE TWO ESSENTIAL

FLUIDS ON WHICH ALL LIFE DEPENDS,

HAVE BECOME GLOBAL GARBAGE CANS.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

In some places, plastic microbeads outnumber plankton (a critical source of our oceanic food chain) by 26:1. The new generation of “biodegradable” plastics won’t solve this problem, because the conditions required for this to happen just do not exist in the ocean.

THE SEA, THOUGH CHANGED IN A

SINISTER WAY, WILL CONTINUE TO EXIST:

THE THREAT IS RATHER TO LIFE ITSELF.

Rachel Carson

The bitter commercial reality is that once trash reaches the open ocean it’s everybody’s problem… and nobody’s accountability. We need to stop trash reaching the ocean in the first place. But how?

The systemic, sustainable answer is four-dimensional.

We need to change human behavior, especially the pattern of “consume and dispose”.

We need to become more efficient producers; not “producing more, quicker”, but using better input materials for production, materials that can be completely recycled or perfectly decomposed at zero harm to the ecosystem.

We need to extract the trash that is already in the deep ocean.

We need to catch trash that is close to land before it is carried out to ocean by tide, current and wind.

Points 1-3 above are long-term change projects. Point 4 is a quick win; an opportunity to make instant improvement. Autonomous drones offer a low-cost, high-effectiveness approach to catching marine litter. A drone can operate 24/7 (trash does not keep regular working hours) in hostile conditions, and can do work that living beings cannot, or should not be compelled to, do. When your drone is also a learning machine, then a team of drones becomes a responsive, self-organizing swarm – an autonomous net to patrol your inland waters and catch waste before it harms the ocean ecosystem.

WE KNOW THAT WHEN WE PROTECT OUR

OCEANS, WE’RE PROTECTING OUR

FUTURE.

Bill Clinton

This is the future: autonomous drones clearing marine litter, while humans – and all species – just live, thrive and have fun! Technology at work, serving the sea.

OLIVER CUNNINGHAM is a sci-fi geek and futurist. He makes drones that swim around cities, eating marine plastic and keeping our seas beautiful.

Sources: Ellen MacArthur Foundation at the 2016 World Economic Forum; the United Nations; The Guardian; The Telegraph; www.plasticoceans.org

WasteShark is an aquatic drone with a taste for floating garbage

Just when you thought it was safe to throw trash in the water, some smart South African entrepreneur comes along and invents WasteShark: an aquatic drone with a taste for garbage. Currently being trialed at the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, WasteShark is essentially an autonomous Roomba vacuum cleaner for the sea. Coming in two different sizes, and using an assortment of smart sensors, it can intelligently trawl waterways while munching more than 400 pounds of trash.“With a smart vacuum cleaner, the aim is to sweep up dust the whole time so you never have to see it,” creator Richard Hardiman told Digital Trends. “With these drones, the idea is that they constantly clean up the water so you never see a buildup of waste. The more you do that, the less waste sinks to the bottom and ultimately gets swept out into the ocean.”Hardiman said that he started his WasteShark project to create a device capable of keeping waters clean 24/7, regardless of weather conditions. “I didn’t want to invent a robot which takes away jobs,” he said. “Coming from Africa, the last thing I wanted was to increase unemployment for people. But I did want to make something with the ability to improve our lives, by carrying out a job that couldn’t be done efficiently by people.”

Early on, he explained that the idea for WasteShark was to use computer vision to spot floating trash. “Unfortunately, water and image sensing is a tough combination, since the reflection and refraction of light in the water makes it very difficult to identify objects,” he said. “As a result, we had to go back to the drawing board.”

What he eventually came up with is arguably even smarter than that, since the drone can learn its physical environment. Users are able to specify geo-fenced areas the robot sticks to, but within these it can learn where particular trouble spots are. “It slowly learns its environment by learning which places have had the highest build-up of trash, and [it can then] go back to that spot on the same tidal pattern or weather and wind patterns on subsequent days,” he said.

The current contract with the Port of Rotterdam lasts until next year, after which Hardiman said he will be ready to roll out the technology worldwide. In true shark movie sequel fashion, there’s even a larger WasteShark — capable of swallowing more than 1,000 pounds of garbage — in development. Hardiman is calling it the “Great WasteShark.”

“Long term, my strategy is to have autonomous drones like this in ports and highly trafficked water areas all over the world, much as you’ll have self-driving cars on the road,” he concluded.

Read the full article by Digital Trends article