By Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen, June 23, 2018
With fat wheels for tracking through the sand, the beach-cleaning robot looks like a cross between a toy and the Mars rover.
The robot is made entirely by 3D printer, comes to about mid-shin and weighs as much as a bag of groceries. Three of these, all named “Bowie,” will be spending the summer on Westboro Beach, picking up little bits of trash along the shoreline with a scoop and dumping the offending debris in an onboard bin.
If all goes as planned, with the help of their human handlers, the robots will have “trained their data sets” to be able tell when something doesn’t belong on the beach and pick it up without human intervention by the end of the summer. They’re quiet, unobtrusive and easy to repair, says inventor Erin Kennedy, the founder of Robot Missions, who has been building robots since she was 13.
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/a-robot-named-bowie-is-on-a-mission-to-clean-up-westboro-beach-and-thats-just-the-start?video_autoplay=true