Italian Scientists Develop Quadruped Robot for Garbage Cleanup

TapTechNews July 31st news, Italian scientists have developed a quadruped robot specifically for cleaning up garbage, especially cigarette butts that endanger marine ecosystems. This robot named VERO is equipped with a leg vacuum cleaner and can independently identify and clean up garbage on various terrains.

According to TapTechNews, VERO was designed and manufactured by the research team of the Dynamic Legged Systems Laboratory at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa. The research team pointed out in a paper published in April that cigarette butts are extremely harmful to the marine ecosystem, and they will release toxic chemicals and microplastics into the ocean during the decomposition process. In addition, cigarette butts are also the second most common untreated garbage globally. And wheeled or tracked robots are difficult to operate in complex terrains, and the quadruped design of VERO provides a solution for this.

VERO is specifically designed for this common small-sized garbage. The operator only needs to set the target area, and VERO can patrol independently, use the installed camera and neural network to identify garbage, and suck it up with the leg vacuum cleaner.

The test results show that VERO can operate stably on complex terrains and successfully removed 90% of the identified cigarette butts.

At present, VERO is still in the research and development stage, but the research team said that the design of this robot can be applied to multiple fields, such as agricultural spraying, infrastructure inspection, and construction, etc.