Thermonator can set things on fire, while VERO is a vacuum-equipped robot dog designed to clean up beaches, factories, and more. The current quadruped robot prototype is capable of collecting cigarette butts autonomously, the second most common undisposed waste worldwide, across terrains that are hard to reach for wheeled and tracked robots.
It utilizes convolutional neural network for litter detection, followed by a time-optimal planner for reducing the time needed to collect all the target objects. To precisely remove the litter, a visual-servoing procedure drives the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner that is attached to one of the robot legs on top of the detected cigarette butt.
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As a result of this particular position of the nozzle, we are able to perform the collection task without even stopping the robot’s motion, thus greatly increasing the time-efficiency of the entire procedure. Extensive tests were conducted in six different outdoor scenarios to show the performance of our prototype and method. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first time that such a design and method was presented and successfully tested on a legged robot,” said the researchers.
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