Robot for rubbish collection

The weekly rubbish bin collection can be a nightmare for many across Europe as the streets they live on are just too narrow for the lorry to go down but scientists have now come up with an ingenious on-demand rubbish collection – DustCart.

DustCart is a robot – about the size of a person – that can navigate narrow alleys, stop outside a person’s door and take the rubbish away. The robot is mounted with cameras and other sensors to ‘see’ where it’s going, and scans the path ahead to avoid collisions with stationary and other mobile objects.

Professor Paolo Dario – coordinator of DustBot, the EU-funded project that created DustCart – said the robot is essentially a mobile bin bristling with state-of-the-art technology.

“We’ve taken the very best and most advanced robotics components to build DustCart which solves a very real problem for waste authorities across Europe,” he said “Yes it is a bin on wheels – there’s the drawer that you place your bag of rubbish in – but there’s a lot more to the robot than that.”

DustCart uses a triangulation system which interacts with a wireless network in its area of operation to navigate its way to resident’s homes. It uses three levels of intelligent control; autonomous built-in systems for motion sensing, obstacle avoidance and speech recognition; ambient intelligent environment to supervise the robot, send it commands and to navigate it through the streets; and human control as all images taken by DustCart are relayed to a control centre which would intervene in an emergency.

The robot is being trialled for two months in Peccoli in Italy where 100 households are relying on two DustCarts to pick up their rubbish – all other waste collection services are suspended.