A new remote-controlled robot called the BeBot is helping keep Florida beaches clean, and if all goes well, the other 29 BeBots manufactured could help clean additional beaches, resorts, and more.
Florida's beaches are known as some of the best in the world thanks to our blue and green planet, but humanity has gotten in the way of that at times by leaving trash in the sand or water. This is especially problematic as many plastics don't break down, which means they eventually find their way into precious marine ecosystems.
"Walk any beach or coastline around the world, and you're bound to encounter some form of plastic pollution," 4ocean, the marine cleanup company that purchased BeBot, notes on its website. "Plastic waste isn't just an eyesore that impacts tourism and local economies; it's also an environmental hazard that can harm wildlife and degrade crucial coastal ecosystems."
BeBot is working its way around beaches in South Florida at the moment, but another BeBot will soon be deployed to Hawaii to "support local partners and existing cleanup initiatives on the island of Oahu." 4ocean says the sole purpose of BeBot is to clean and restore the world's coastlines while also preserving the natural beach environment.
It's not fully automatic like iRobot's Roomba, but is instead remote-controlled by someone. According to BeBot manufacturer Poralu Marine, this is for safety reasons, as the machine will likely often be in the vicinity of beachgoers. It can be controlled remotely from up to 300 meters away, so while it isn't automatic, it will look autonomous to those near it.
"The BeBot can silently and discreetly clean up to 3,000m2 of beach an hour depending on the topography," 4ocean says. That 3,000m2 is the equivalent of seven basketball courts.
The BeBot is 100% electric, so it does not require fuel and isn't as loud as a traditional engine, which is great for those trying to relax on the beach. It runs on a mix of solar and battery power, too, so there's no harmful gas, liquid emissions, or diesel fumes.
"To help keep beaches clean, many coastal properties utilize heavy-duty equipment like tractors to rake the sand or manual sifters that are labor intensive, less efficient, trigger beach erosion, and automatically crush fauna and flora present in the sand," 4ocean's website says. "Yet these devices leave a lot of plastic waste behind because it's either too small or too deep in the sand to capture."
That's not the case with the BeBot, though. It operates at depths of up to 10cm and collects plastic debris as small as 1cm2, according to 4ocean. It can pick up cigarette butts, food wrappers, bottle caps, and other plastic fragments that are easily concealed by sand. It can also sift through sand, rake algae, lift and carry larger items like beach chairs, and level otherwise unleveled sand patches and fields.
4ocean says the BeBot program is on track to remove 20 million pounds of trash by the year's end and there are 30 BeBots in total right now that could be deployed to beaches in other places.
BeBot is just one of many cleaning robots trying to make the world a cleaner place. There's also the Clearbot robot Razer helped create to clean ocean waste. For more about the ocean and the world's beaches, read about this new reef discovered in Australia that's taller than the Empire State Building, and then read about this bionic moon jellyfish created by scientists after that.
Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.