Trashbot is a robotic trash can that is designed with the ability to identify and segregate between trash that should be thrown away and trash that can be recycled.
The project is the brainchild of the CleanRobotics team, who dreamed about coming up with a clever way to do waste management. Trashbot is initially aimed at companies looking for automated and dynamic recycling methods. It is still in its early phase of development but it already shows a very promising appeal.
"Waste remains the one process that corporations cannot measure and effectively sort," says CleanRobotics. The company notes that task of recycling materials is normally given to individuals, most of which don't even have time to learn and stay updated with recycling regulations.
The idea of recycling and its impact on man-made trash is not entirely new. A number of governments and companies have already launched their own methods of recycling trash.
The greatest challenge in recycling is the manual labor involved, such as sorting trash, identifying which can be recycled and grouping these together according to material. This is where the Trashbot comes in.
"What if there was a Trashbot that took your trash, separated the actual trash from recyclable waste and dynamically updated your waste management processes with data on trash and recycling?" suggests CleanRobotics.
Vaish Krishnamurthy, CEO at CleanRobotics, said that the idea of creating Trashbot comes from the confusion brought by the rules that govern the act of recycling. For instance, can the plastic bag inside a cereal box be recycled? As more and more eco-conscious individuals become confused on which items to put in the recycling bin, more ideas on proper recycling and trash management also sprang up.
As far as trash is concerned, it was found that at least 10 countries make up to the top waste-producing countries in the world. These include the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Mexico, France, Italy, Spain and Turkey.
Krishnamurthy added that as they progress on their project, they intend to use manual training combined with data accumulation in order to increase the Trashbot's accuracy and efficiency levels. The goal is to attain a better recycling rate than the 20 to 35 percent achieved by humans today.
