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Tag: Sustainability

Drone ‘shark’ that eats plastic goes live in UK waters

The WasteShark is an autonomous marine drone and is the first designed specifically to eat waste.  Its shape is inspired by the whale shark and it can remove 1kg (2.3lb) of waste per minute and last for eight hours at a time.

The device is making its UK debut in Ilfracombe harbour, in Devon, on Monday, after operating successfully in five countries, including South Africa and United Arab Emirates.

It runs on a by a rechargeable battery and will capture up to 160 litres of waste at a time, including plastics and microplastics.

It can also extract oils and pest plants such as algae and duckweed.

The plastic waste will be turned into pellets that will be used to make products such as kayaks.

Created by RanMarine Technology, the WasteShark is designed to be harmonious with the environment and it causes no harm to wildlife. GPS points are programmed into the drone to ensure that it covers hot-spots where waste gathers. It can also collect important data about the marine environment.

WWF and Sky Ocean Rescue are launching the WasteShark as part of their work to improve Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). These areas include precious habitats and the species within them, and are under serious threat from issues including plastic and pollution.

Ilfracombe harbour lies within the Bideford to Foreland Point MPA, home to a number of important species and diverse habitats, including rocky reefs, honeycomb worms, pink sea fans and the charismatic spiny lobster. The area is also regularly visited by seabirds and cetaceans including the elusive harbour porpoise.

Lundy Island, home to some of the UK’s most diverse and incredible wildlife, including species of conservation importance like grey seals, lies just 12 miles off the coast.

The device is being tested in the UK at Ilfracombe harbour

Jenny Oates, UK SEAS Programme Manager at WWF, said: “The WasteShark will help us fight the waste that enters the harbour, snapping it up before the tide takes it out to sea and it ends up threatening wildlife in other precious marine areas.

“There’s no doubt we need to see major systemic change when it comes to single-use plastic. As we strive to get governments and businesses to commit to turning off the plastic tap, there is an important role for innovative technology to remove it from our seas.”

Read the full article by Sky News article

WasteShark, the plastic-eating drone

WasteShark, the plastic-eating drone

Richard Hardiman, the accidental environmentalist, speaks honestly about his entrepreneurial journey, discovering a passion for drones and plastic recycling he never dreamed of, and how the creative, entrepreneurial side lies in each of us- waiting to be unleashed.

RanMarine Technology B.V. have just launched WasteShark, their first product. These fully autonomous drones swim through the water, collecting waste and other non-biodegradables, whilst gathering data about the environment.

Q: What’s unique or innovative about RanMarine Technology?

Waste removal and plastic recycling is not a ‘sexy’ subject but when you start using drones in water to start reducing the negative effects of pollution, that generally sparks a conversation, not only about just how bad pollution in our oceans has gotten, but how cool the future of technology really is.

Our products are unique but I think our innovation and understanding of what the future needs are our most differentiating aspects.

Q: What inspired you to start?

A few years ago, I was watching two men in a boat cleaning out an area of water with a pool net; a small and relatively ineffective pool net and the inefficiency in that process just drove me mad, especially given the amount of trash they were trying to collect with that net.

I started playing around with the idea of automated scoops to pick this up and filter the plastic out, eventually, I narrowed it down to USV’s (Unmanned Surface Vehicles/Vessels) and how we could use drone technology to automate this plastic collection.

As with any idea that speaks to current problems, everyone I spoke to about this solution got very excited, but an idea is one thing, committing to it and creating something that has never been done before is quite another.

“Eventually, I built a prototype in my garage; it was made of plumbers piping Arduino boards and some bilge pumps to act as motors – I put it all together with some crudely written code and tested the prototype in my pool; despite my skills, it worked!”

From there I joined an Accelerator (portxl.org) in Rotterdam and found new partners and investment and we have been building ever since.

Q: What’s your biggest achievement to date?

It may sound odd but the fact that we created a business from scratch, which was based on the idea of “what if”, and turned that into something that has a demand globally…that to me is pretty big. It sounds like a linear process, you have an idea, build a prototype, find investment and create a product, but the journey is far harder and path far more winding than that – we created something that never existed before and that always pleases me.

Q: What’s your plans for the next 6 months or year?

Our next two months is totally focussed on market readiness; we have a number of drones out in the field right now (The Netherlands, USA, Africa and India) been tested by launching customers and partners with a view to refining the requirements, usability and tweaking any parts of the software and hardware for customer-readiness. Along with this, we are into scale-up mode on our production lines and logistics into our launching markets; 2018 is the year we started sending our first product The WasteShark around the globe, so internally we are focused on making these steps as simple as possible. Parallel to this, we are working on our next two products, so its all systems go.

Q: What do you wish you’d known at the beginning? Has inspiration come from unexpected places?

I knew nothing about drones, maritime or even the huge problem that is plastic waste before I saw those two men in a boat with their net; My inspiration came from trying to solve a problem of inefficacy in a process, as many new innovations do – if you had asked me three or four years ago did I think I would be doing what I am doing now I would have laughed…but that’s because inspiration and innovation do come from the most unlikely of places and send you on a path that you can’t always predict, but that’s half the fun.

If we had to start over again there would, of course, be things I would change, decisions, partnerships or development paths that you would not have taken, but these are all learning processes, you try your best not to make the same mistake twice but quite often you do anyway. Part of being an entrepreneur is having the tenacity to live with your mistakes, choices and the constant threat of failure and learning to adapt to that and continue going forward.

“…If you had asked me three or four years ago did I think I would be doing what I am doing now I would have laughed…”

Is there a particular moment where you had to rethink things?

There have been many moments! Oddly though never one of giving up – with anything new and untested you invariably come up against problems that you thought would be simple to solve and become almost show-stoppers to the project, but I am big on solutions, you can find problems everywhere in life…I prefer that if I am shown a problem I am also given one or two possibilities on how we intend to solve the problem; too often we use a problem to mean that we no longer have to work or think, that is just lazy.

It is going well now but that doesn’t mean that problems do not arise, we are a small and growing team and we are working well together, but with a problem the size of the one we are trying to help solve, roadblocks and problems occur every day; its just how you manage your way around or through them.

Read the full article by Trvst article

Here are 5 most successful robotics startups from the Netherlands in 2018

Robotics technology is no more a concept now; it has become a part of our lives today and its now making a debut in all kinds of sectors. Whether it be transportation, construction, home or office, modern robotics is becoming essential in all the aspects of our lives.

When it comes to the Netherlands, there are many innovative startups which are involved in the process of robotic development and designing. However, there are only a few of them which are thriving and achieving success for the solutions they are creating.

RanMarine Technology

This Rotterdam-based startup, RanMarine Technology has created a unique way to clean the waters. They have developed an aqua-marine drone to clear litter from the waters. This drone acts like a smart vacuum cleaner and sweeps up the dust and garbage in the water, without harming the aquatic life. Capable of swimming for up to 16 hours, the WasteShark scans its immediate environment as it works, collecting data to send back to its central command. It can test the waters for pH levels, conductivity, ammonium, chloride, nitrate, salinity, and many other metrics.

Read the full article by Silicon Canals to learn more about the 5 most successful robotics startups.

Dubai is now home to a trash-eating ‘shark’ drone

The WasteShark by RanMarine not only collects floating waste but also filters waters and collects water quality data. So far ut has operated in Dubai, South Africa and The Netherlands.

A shark prowling the coastline is normally a worrying sight, but this waterborne drone terrorizes floating trash instead of people.

Developed by Dutch company RanMarine, the WasteShark takes nature as its inspiration with its whale shark-like mouth. But instead of vacuuming up krill, this device collects waste. Conceived in 2016, the marine drone will begin operations in Dubai Marina in November after a year of trials with local partner Ecocoast.

According to RanMarine, the WasteShark is available in both autonomous and remote-controlled models. Measuring just over five feet by three-and-a-half feet (1.5 meters by 1.1 meter), it can carry up to 352 lbs of trash (159.6 kg) and has an operational battery life of 16 hours.

As of 2016 there were approximately 150 million metric tons of plastic in the world’s oceans, per a report by the World Economic Forum. One widely cited paper from December 2014 estimated that over a quarter of a million tons of ocean plastic pollution was afloat.

Read the full article by Dubai Now article

 

Fleets Of Wasteshark ‘Aquadrones’ Could Be Cleaning Ocean Waste In The Future

A swarm of autonomous robots that can swim across bodies of water to collect garbage might be the key to saving the oceans.  A few years ago, RanMarine Technology, a company from the Netherlands, has introduced WasteShark, an aquadrone that works like a smart vacuum cleaner (essentially, a Roomba for the seas) to gather wastes that end up in waterways before they accumulate into a great big patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Wall-E On Water

Every year, about 1.4 billion pounds of trash end up in the ocean. Plastics, styrofoam, and other nonbiodegradable materials get dumped into the waters, eaten by fishes and birds or collect into what has become the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a gyre of debris between California and Hawaii bigger than Alaska.

Trash in seas and oceans have become a huge problem, but the WasteShark might be able to help.

RanMarine said that its aquadrones are inspired by whale sharks, “nature’s most efficient harvesters of marine biomass.” The company claims that the vessels can collect up to 200 liters of waste before it needs to be emptied and swim across the water for 16 hours.

The WasteShark are autonomous as it can intelligently wade through water and collect trash using sensors. It is equipped with a GPS to track its movements.

Read the full article by Tech Times 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

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