Robot Garbage Man Only Comes When Called
It's WALL•E!
You know how it is, you're sound asleep until the crash, crunch, bang of the bin truck wakes you up and you realize you've forgotten to put the garbage out. Again.
Most of us, at one time or another, have done the mad down down the stairs in our barely-theres to personally present the garbage man with our rubbish. Now, imagine how soundly you could sleep if there existed a garbage man that only came to collect your rubbish when you called him.
Dustcart is an intelligent robot about the size of a person. He is mounted on a Segway base and can 'see' both moving and stationary objects with integrate cameras and sensors. An E.U. funded project, Dustcart collects your garbage only when you summon it.
Residents use their phones to make contact with the robot and using a triangulation system, he navigates his way to their homes by interacting with wireless networks. The system also plans out the best route between pick-ups.
Paolo Dario, coordinator of the DustBot project, told the Daily Mail that though most robotics researchers want to make a fully automated and intelligent system, Dustcart was built using a different approach.
"Here, we have a smart robot in a smart environment; the robot 'talks' to its surroundings and the surroundings communicate back. This means the robot has access to a lot more information and computing power," Dario explained.
Though it sounds like Dustcart will be putting your friendly neighborhood garbage man out of business, he still can't operate without real people. Dustcart is monitored via CCTV that streams to a human control centre. The staff steps in if there's an emergency, such as the technology failing or someone trying to make off with the robot.
The Dustcart seems to have been around for a while (there are videos on YouTube that have been there since last year) and the DustBot Website lists the duration of the €2.8 million project as 36 months, however, it doesn't say what date the test ended.
Do you think this would work for your town?
Read more about the Dustcart project on the Daily Mail.
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Unfortunately in society there is a small percentage of moron that would make this impracticable.
I can see people robbing these machines and selling them to another town or city for big bucks. Don't think we're ready for expensive robots to be running the streets alone. Its like a mobile box of money
Cute, but a terrible idea. I would assume it's accompanied by a truck. Unless it contains a black hole, it's not going to carry an entire neighborhood's garbage. Why not just put the telephone and route planning program into the truck and let the driver physically dump it in? It's not like there's a specialized task that requires a mechanical touch.
I like this concept. Maybe not the details of it, but the overall concept has merit.
I personally only put garbage out about once a month, or less and sometimes only every other month, even though I'm paying a special tax to have 3 men and a truck make weekly excursions into my neighborhood to take my personal garbage from my own curb.
That is a waste.
It's a waste of tax money...its a waste of manpower...its a waste of equipment...and a waste of fuel.
Here's my routine: I save my plastic grocery store bags and re use them as garbage bags. (i don't believe in those stupid re usable grocery bags) I have an extra large commercial size garbage can, with plastic liner, in my flower bed (hidden by tall flowers) next to my front porch. When the plastic grocery bags are full, they get tied shut and dropped into the extra large commercial sized garbage can. When that is full, the liner gets tied shut and drug out to the curb. I bought a big box of extra large commercial sized garbage can liners about 5 or 6 years ago and I still havn't ran out yet.
I could see a savings in manpower and money by using a community dumpster. The problem would be where to locate it. Another possiblity would be to drop off a robot on every block with pre programmed stops based on who calls for service. The robot would collect from locations that called for garbage pickup and consolidate it in a temporary dumpster that would be picked up later in the day.
The advantage to me with a system like this would be that I could get a tax break for only using garbage pickup once a month whereas people that over use their pickup service could be charged extra.
Out here in CA I could see the unemployed unionized garbage men taking weapons to the scab robot workers.
We could arm the bins so they can protect themselves?
We could arm the bins so they can protect themselves?
That is, till judgment day happens...
If someone hacked these and ran people over i would lol.
It's not Wall-E. Wall-E looks like Number Johnny 5's offspring if you can picture two robots conceiving and one giving birth. OK maybe that doesn't compute.
I can see it now. Americans sued over this product for some stupid reason
The concept is really cool...but i think it can't be implemented here..just too many morons...tsk.tsk.tsk.
So, now we only need suicide booths and Robots addicted to stealing in order to recreate Futurama universe?
Love the idea, but like some of you others, not sure about the execution...would definitely have to have a central collection point, which would then be transported for recycling or decomposition, but as a solution for reducing the noise pollution in cities - great!
Experiments have been going on for years with a far better systems: a sort of garbage sewage system. Every street would be outfitted with a shaft in which you dump your garbage bags. A system similar to sewers than brings it to the place where it is recycled and burned. Expensive to install, but requires very little maintenance, is fast and requires little staff to operate.
This would be ideal in urban centres. Smaller villages would continue to be served by traditional garbage trucks (these robots don't look as if they'd be able to serve a remote village either...)
Skynet will use these robots to collect and transport compacted human to processing sites.
Experiments have been going on for years with a far better systems: a sort of garbage sewage system. Every street would be outfitted with a shaft in which you dump your garbage bags. A system similar to sewers than brings it to the place where it is recycled and burned. Expensive to install, but requires very little maintenance, is fast and requires little staff to operate.This would be ideal in urban centres. Smaller villages would continue to be served by traditional garbage trucks (these robots don't look as if they'd be able to serve a remote village either...)
Wouldn't that smell like hell and require constant maintance just like sewers?
If someone hacked these and ran people over i would lol.
That would be great in NY for ridding of annoying tourists that clog the sidewalks.
Doesn't look like it can carry as much trash as a garbage truck.
For some reason the head of Dustcart reminds me of VINCENT from that old Disney movie The Black Hole. Maybe they are cousins or something.
First I would forget to put the trash out, now I would forget to call the robot...lol.
I love these robot articles. Although after seeing that video about the beer-fetching robot a few weeks ago, I'm concerned about the speed of these garbage-collecting robots as well. Any word on how fast they go? You might have to request pick-up a day in advance...
"Here, we have a smart robot in a smart environment; the robot 'talks' to its surroundings and the surroundings communicate back. This means the robot has access to a lot more information and computing power," Dario explained.
Skynet will use these robots to collect and transport compacted human to processing sites.
Don't be ridiculous! This is clearly more of a Geth system of communal intelligence.
If I saw one of these, in my town, I would capture it and slowly torture it like that box droid in jabbas palace.
This is the most ridiculous thing I have heard of. It would take a hundred or more of these to match the capabilities of one garbage truck with two garbage men. After visiting two or three houses it would have to return to dump the trash. That would be a massive waste in energy and increase traffic compared to a garbage truck covering grids of a few hundred houses then heading back to unload and handle over 1000 homes a day. What about business with a lot of trash and recycling or bulky items? They would have to hire private trucks increasing traffic. Homeowners would also have to make more trips to the dump for bulky items which they currently pay a small fee for.
Experiments have been going on for years with a far better systems: a sort of garbage sewage system. Every street would be outfitted with a shaft in which you dump your garbage bags. A system similar to sewers than brings it to the place where it is recycled and burned. Expensive to install, but requires very little maintenance, is fast and requires little staff to operate.This would be ideal in urban centres. Smaller villages would continue to be served by traditional garbage trucks (these robots don't look as if they'd be able to serve a remote village either...)
This could never work there are too many incompatible items that would constantly clog the system. Such as used steel, branches, batteries, appliances.
Most of us, at one time or another, have done the mad down down [dash] - Please correct!
Human will soon be replaced with robots on garbage business.
In the future no human is even needed in the society.
What if it becomes self aware? Does it terminate us by turning us into garbage?
love to see these robots work in a foot or 2 of snow.
God Bless Us, Everyone! - Tiny Tim
Experiments have been going on for years with a far better systems: a sort of garbage sewage system. Every street would be outfitted with a shaft in which you dump your garbage bags. A system similar to sewers than brings it to the place where it is recycled and burned. Expensive to install, but requires very little maintenance, is fast and requires little staff to operate.This would be ideal in urban centres. Smaller villages would continue to be served by traditional garbage trucks (these robots don't look as if they'd be able to serve a remote village either...)
Do you have any idea how expensive that would be? even to install it in an all new neighborhood not to mention retrofitting a city with this. it would probably take a centurey to see a cost savings if it lasted that long
Geth (in Mass Effect)in their early stage could look like this garbage robot.