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Tag: Cleantech

Pilot with the WasteShark in Dordrecht a success

Original article in Dutch. Translation below:  The pilot with the so called WasteShark was a success according to the Dordrecht municipality. During the trials, the device navigated through the Spuihaven in the Dordrecht city centre to clean plastic waste.

The WasteShark collected each time approximately three bags of garbage. This is just as much as what was being fished out before the trial by two men in a boat. The WasteShark makes the boat unnecessary and is also operated by one man.

For the pilot the municipality of Dordrecht cooperated with the developer RanMarine Technology, contractor Krinkels, Cirkellab and the water authority Hollandse Delta. Some experience was gained with the device previously in the Rotterdam port area.

The WasteShark is operated from the waterfront. By means of a camera on the drone, the operator can see what the WasteShark encounters. In addition to waste, they also involved reeds, lily leaves and bridges. To manage these obstacles, the drone was adjusted during the trial period.

The local residents of the Spuihaven were happy with the WasteShark. RanMarine and Krinkels will continue to develop the drone together and deploy it elsewhere in the country. The collected waste is reused. Cirkellabwants to make it a work of art.

Read the full article by Rijnmond article

Sir Robert Syms Opposes Plastic Pollution

Today our Poole MP, Sir Robert Syms, performed the first UK launch of a drone called WasteShark that collects floating plastic and other rubbish so that it can be removed and recycled. Robert used the occasion to give an interview for BBC Radio Solent in which he described the importance of keeping out local waters free of plastic pollution, which can endanger wildlife and spoil Poole Harbour unless we remain vigilant.

The WasteShark drone can either be steered by a handheld joystick or run in autonomous mode, either around a set course or within a set perimeter. It runs silently and safely on rechargeable batteries and includes collision avoidance software. It can hold up to a third of a ton of rubbish before it needs to be emptied and it poses no threat to marine life. At the same time, the drone can serve as a platform for a variety of sensors to measure water quality, temperature and so on.

On behalf of RanMarine Technology, Oliver Cunningham (pictured above) introduced Robert to the WasteShark drone and explained its featured and benefits on BBC Radio Solent before Robert launched the drone into Poole Harbour (picture above). The company vision is that the drones can work steadily in coastal waters worldwide, doing their bit to solve the plastic pollution problem, piece by piece.

The vision is that WasteShark drones can work steadily in urban and coastal waters worldwide, doing their bit to solve the plastic pollution problem, and supporting evidence-based management of Smart Cities.

Read the full article by Poole Conservatives article

Gobbling up your marina problem

ROTTERDAM RanMarine Technology, a 4-year-old Dutch company, has a solution for marina operators for whom floating garbage is an unending pain-in-the-neck. The company has developed the WasteShark, an aquadrone that removes trash and nasty flora from the water.

The WasteShark works round-the-clock, gobbling up garbage floating around marinas and shipyard waters. It also records the water’s temperature, depth and oxygen content with a view to improving water management. Units are now running in pilot projects in the city of Rotterdam and the port of nearby Dordrecht. Commercial projects start soon in South Africa and India.

RanMarine Technology says its drones operate above all in locations where trash is known to collect “waste choke-holds” created by tides and weather. It does not recommend using them in shipping lanes or other high traffic areas.

The cost of sea litter in the European Union has been estimated at up to €630 million a year – mostly plastics.

Richard Hardiman, head of the WasteShark project calls himself “an accidental environmentalist.” He says one day he watched 2 men struggling to scoop litter from a harbor. It led him to develop an aqua drone that collects garbage in a basket,  powered by rechargeable batteries and relatively silent.

Garbage-collecting aqua drones and jellyfish filters for cleaner oceans

A Roomba-like ocean trash collector modelled on a whale shark and a microplastic filter made from jellyfish slime could prevent litter from entering our oceans and help tackle a growing problem that poses threats to wildlife, deters tourists and impacts on coastal economies.

The cost of sea litter in the EU has been estimated at up to €630 million per year. It is mostly composed of plastics, which take hundreds of years to break down in nature, and has the potential to affect human health through the food chain because plastic waste is eaten by the fish that we consume.

‘I’m an accidental environmentalist,’ said Richard Hardiman, who runs a project called WASTESHARK. He says that while walking at his local harbour one day he stopped to watch two men struggle to scoop litter out of the sea using a pool net. Their inefficiency bothered Hardiman, and he set about trying to solve the problem. It was only when he delved deeper into the issue that he realised how damaging marine litter, and plastic in particular, can be, he says.

‘I started exploring where this trash goes – ocean gyres (circular currents), junk gyres, and they’re just full of plastic. I’m very glad that we’re now doing something to lessen the effects,’ he said.

Hardiman developed an unmanned robot, an aqua drone that cruises around urban waters such as harbours, marinas and canals, eating up marine litter like a Roomba of the sea. The waste is collected in a basket which the WasteShark then brings back to shore to be emptied, sorted and recycled.

The design of the autonomous drone is modelled on a whale shark, the ocean’s largest known fish. These giant filter feeders swim around with their mouths open and lazily eat whatever crosses their path.

Read the full article by Horizon article

Rotterdam rising – maritime innovators

Rotterdam also acts as a magnet for maritime innovators from around the world. Richard Hardiman launched his RanMarine technology company three years ago in his native South Africa, but moved to Rotterdam when he gained a place at PortXL, the world’s first maritime startup accelerator.

Hardiman has been developing a kind of floating drone called WasteShark, which travels around collecting floating waste in harbours and waterways. (“It sounds easy, but technically it’s not,” he points out.) Over the last few months, WasteSharks have been tested all over the world, from Mumbai to Baltimore and points in between, and from this month they will be available for sale.

“Rotterdam’s ecosystem is very impressive,” says Hardiman. “I’d been here a few times previously and knew it was a lovely city, but I wasn’t aware of the tech ecosystem they’ve developed here. They have worked really hard at it. Over the last two or three years, the Port of Rotterdam, local government, the mayor’s office and various companies within Rotterdam have transformed what was largely a port city into a tech hub. It really has become the innovative hub of the Netherlands.”

For the full magazine article by Business Life Promotion: click here

The accidental environmentalist – Richard Hardiman (TEDx event CapeTown)

Meet Richard Hardiman, the CEO of RanMarine Technology BV, an environmental technology company specifically focused on using drones in ports, harbours, marinas and inland water environments.

Meet Richard Hardiman, the CEO of RanMarine Technology BV, an environmental technology company specifically focused on using drones in ports, harbours, marinas and inland water environments.

RanMarine Technology’s fully autonomous drones swim through the water, collecting waste and other non-biodegradables, whilst gathering data about the environment.

We asked Hardiman what motivated him to agree to stand on stage at our next TEDxCapeTownSalon event, to which he responded: “I wanted to share our team’s journey and explain how we intend to change and help heal the Oceans through technology.” “I am inspired by people who do bigger things and play a “bigger game” in life”, and that feeds into what he hopes to achieve with this experience. “I want to…inspire others to think a little differently and perhaps also take that leap of faith”. Hardiman, a radio veteran, he not only hosted a show on KFM for many years but also co-founded 2oceansvibe Radio, confesses to feeling a bit nervous and a little stressed about his TEDx talk but adds that he’s “…ultimately looking forward to it”.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community

The original TEDx video can be found TEDx

Drones will clear our ocean trash

In 2014 Planet Earth produced 311 million tons of new plastic. 32% of it leaked into fragile ecosystems. 10-20 million tons reached the ocean, causing US$13 billion of environmental damage. California, Oregon and Washington alone spend $500 million annually clearing trash from their Pacific coastline.

WATER AND AIR, THE TWO ESSENTIAL

FLUIDS ON WHICH ALL LIFE DEPENDS,

HAVE BECOME GLOBAL GARBAGE CANS.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

In some places, plastic microbeads outnumber plankton (a critical source of our oceanic food chain) by 26:1. The new generation of “biodegradable” plastics won’t solve this problem, because the conditions required for this to happen just do not exist in the ocean.

THE SEA, THOUGH CHANGED IN A

SINISTER WAY, WILL CONTINUE TO EXIST:

THE THREAT IS RATHER TO LIFE ITSELF.

Rachel Carson

The bitter commercial reality is that once trash reaches the open ocean it’s everybody’s problem… and nobody’s accountability. We need to stop trash reaching the ocean in the first place. But how?

The systemic, sustainable answer is four-dimensional.

We need to change human behavior, especially the pattern of “consume and dispose”.

We need to become more efficient producers; not “producing more, quicker”, but using better input materials for production, materials that can be completely recycled or perfectly decomposed at zero harm to the ecosystem.

We need to extract the trash that is already in the deep ocean.

We need to catch trash that is close to land before it is carried out to ocean by tide, current and wind.

Points 1-3 above are long-term change projects. Point 4 is a quick win; an opportunity to make instant improvement. Autonomous drones offer a low-cost, high-effectiveness approach to catching marine litter. A drone can operate 24/7 (trash does not keep regular working hours) in hostile conditions, and can do work that living beings cannot, or should not be compelled to, do. When your drone is also a learning machine, then a team of drones becomes a responsive, self-organizing swarm – an autonomous net to patrol your inland waters and catch waste before it harms the ocean ecosystem.

WE KNOW THAT WHEN WE PROTECT OUR

OCEANS, WE’RE PROTECTING OUR

FUTURE.

Bill Clinton

This is the future: autonomous drones clearing marine litter, while humans – and all species – just live, thrive and have fun! Technology at work, serving the sea.

OLIVER CUNNINGHAM is a sci-fi geek and futurist. He makes drones that swim around cities, eating marine plastic and keeping our seas beautiful.

Sources: Ellen MacArthur Foundation at the 2016 World Economic Forum; the United Nations; The Guardian; The Telegraph; www.plasticoceans.org

WasteShark is an aquatic drone with a taste for floating garbage

Just when you thought it was safe to throw trash in the water, some smart South African entrepreneur comes along and invents WasteShark: an aquatic drone with a taste for garbage. Currently being trialed at the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, WasteShark is essentially an autonomous Roomba vacuum cleaner for the sea. Coming in two different sizes, and using an assortment of smart sensors, it can intelligently trawl waterways while munching more than 400 pounds of trash.“With a smart vacuum cleaner, the aim is to sweep up dust the whole time so you never have to see it,” creator Richard Hardiman told Digital Trends. “With these drones, the idea is that they constantly clean up the water so you never see a buildup of waste. The more you do that, the less waste sinks to the bottom and ultimately gets swept out into the ocean.”Hardiman said that he started his WasteShark project to create a device capable of keeping waters clean 24/7, regardless of weather conditions. “I didn’t want to invent a robot which takes away jobs,” he said. “Coming from Africa, the last thing I wanted was to increase unemployment for people. But I did want to make something with the ability to improve our lives, by carrying out a job that couldn’t be done efficiently by people.”

Early on, he explained that the idea for WasteShark was to use computer vision to spot floating trash. “Unfortunately, water and image sensing is a tough combination, since the reflection and refraction of light in the water makes it very difficult to identify objects,” he said. “As a result, we had to go back to the drawing board.”

What he eventually came up with is arguably even smarter than that, since the drone can learn its physical environment. Users are able to specify geo-fenced areas the robot sticks to, but within these it can learn where particular trouble spots are. “It slowly learns its environment by learning which places have had the highest build-up of trash, and [it can then] go back to that spot on the same tidal pattern or weather and wind patterns on subsequent days,” he said.

The current contract with the Port of Rotterdam lasts until next year, after which Hardiman said he will be ready to roll out the technology worldwide. In true shark movie sequel fashion, there’s even a larger WasteShark — capable of swallowing more than 1,000 pounds of garbage — in development. Hardiman is calling it the “Great WasteShark.”

“Long term, my strategy is to have autonomous drones like this in ports and highly trafficked water areas all over the world, much as you’ll have self-driving cars on the road,” he concluded.

Read the full article by Digital Trends article