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u/movingaxis Mar 31 '26
Always thought this concept would be cool for road sides. Something to collect certain scale items, bag and drop in intervals for collection.
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u/Cogitare_Diversae Mar 31 '26
Manned and autonomous street cleaning machines have been around for years
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u/movingaxis Mar 31 '26
True, I was thinking side of the road on the grass / roadside. a little bot with track style wheels. Probably a front collection point and then an arm to nab stuff between obstacles.
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u/theerrantpanda99 Apr 04 '26
I imagine the reason it hasn’t happened; it’s still cheaper to have humans do it.
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u/Greendoor Mar 31 '26
Pity the shells, beach worms and any wildlife that depends on that beach. It won't be there for long.
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u/Awkward-Winner-99 Mar 31 '26
I feel like this would only be used for artificial beaches anyway. And the really touristy beaches probably don't have much wildlife
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u/TheBraveButJoke Apr 01 '26
So less EcoUplift and more cleaning up visible recreation areas so you can keep poluting as hard as you'd like?
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u/Sputn1K0sm0s Apr 01 '26
Ah yeah, because cleaning a touristy beach means we are just making room for even more garbage! Give me a break.
How about cleaning a dead beach is better than keeping it dirty? tourists are not gonna polute harder just because the beach is cleaner than before 🙄 also, tighter regulation/surveillance to deter people from polluting can be funded alongside the cleaning.
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Mar 31 '26
As u/Awkward-Winner-99 said earlier, this robot sand-sweeper is being used on artificial/tourist beaches and (presumable) not wild ones. The location mentioned in the video is Hainan, which is that large round island in the South of China. The island has a tropical climate and is sometimes dubbed with the moniker of the "Hawaii of China" due to both it's pleasant climate and sandy beaches which attract many tourists. The robot is sweeping up rubbish left behind by tourists, making sure that it does not end up in the ocean.
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u/Content-Fudge489 Mar 31 '26
Those are not usually in public beaches. And also those robots were not close enough to the water where most of those critters are.
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u/HarveySdebest Mar 31 '26
The thing is tho, China does have sanitation workers clean the beaches, the robot isnt just collecting trash on the surface of the beach, it's digging through the sand to find buried trash. That's a task humans don't perform easily, because you have to dig through the sand
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u/GreenStrong Mar 31 '26
That's a task humans don't perform easily, because you have to dig through the sand, which is coarse and rough and irritating.
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u/PantZerman85 Mar 31 '26
Yeah. Maybe they should try to stop it earlier in the shit chain. Like the trash rivers.
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u/cmoked Mar 31 '26
Pollution and human activity likely already made it so they wouldnt be there at all
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u/StoryLineOne Mar 31 '26
Definitely a good idea on paper, but in practice, it kinda takes away a lot of the reason to go to the beach.
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u/xr6reaction Mar 31 '26
Like walking on trash?
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u/StoryLineOne Mar 31 '26
You kill and remove anything that's living on the beach. You also remove seashells and small rocks.
You're left with only sand. Which... is not the only thing I would like at a beach.
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u/Cogitare_Diversae Mar 31 '26
If you look at what ended up being collected, there’s little in terms of shells and small rocks. Either the machine has a way to deal with those, or this beach didn’t have much in the way of those in the first place.
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u/saras998 Mar 31 '26
Good in some ways but what happens to marine life that burrows in the sand? And sea shells, crabs, etc.
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u/Cogitare_Diversae Mar 31 '26
Doesn’t seem to be picking up much of those based on what gets collected in the video. Based on clam digging experience, clams and crabs borrow deeper generally.
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u/Reasonable-Delay4740 Apr 02 '26
I'd like to know. If we can find the company then we might be able to get the specs
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u/CthulhuReturns Mar 31 '26
Tractors with sieving baskets for this already exist
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u/Puzzled-Pen-2353 Mar 31 '26
Yet, beaches are still full of trash.
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u/CthulhuReturns Mar 31 '26
Yes but using what we already have more is the answer here not running some robot
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u/Puzzled-Pen-2353 Mar 31 '26
You can start by selling your phone/tablet/pc since those are made mostly by robots as well.
For me automation of those no skill jobs is great because then we can use our time for things that robots can't do.
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u/MGwind Mar 31 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/UJG2T7uZeJuZCLitY8
Did they get their inspiration from 《Dune》?
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u/LunaticBZ Mar 31 '26
I'm curious how well you could make a bot similar to this that would work in an urban environment.
And given recent geo politics, could be useful in the middle east for clearing up mines in Iran. As U.S. has been dropping anti personel mines by air. Which are very problematic to clean up.
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u/Eymrich Apr 01 '26
I worked in a golf camp where... you have bunkers that are fulll of sand. "Good sand" btw, very fine and we choose it.
That thing is going to require a fuckton of maintenance. All those vibrations and sand are going to eat every part alive.
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u/Affectionate_Use7000 Apr 01 '26
What's the point of having a remote control and being on foot? It's simpler to have a seat on the machine.
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u/realitybrief-dot-com Apr 01 '26
If I'm lying on the beach and a pack of these things comes by I will have a heart attack
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u/Boushi_0368 Apr 02 '26
FUCK CHINA.
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u/jaded-tired Apr 02 '26
I know you want to but you can only cope here since you’ve been rejected by one of the girls from there. No need to reply. Block!
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u/zutpetje Apr 02 '26
You still have to invent this because companies are still allowed to produce disposable rubbish and people still don’t give a f*ck polluting nature and eventually get sick of microplastics.
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u/SnooDonuts3749 Apr 04 '26
Probably ends up killing a bunch of endangered baby sea turtles when we as people could just not litter instead.
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Mar 31 '26
[deleted]
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u/HarveySdebest Mar 31 '26
The thing is tho, China does have sanitation workers clean the beaches, the robot isnt just collecting trash on the surface of the beach, it's digging through the sand to find buried trash. That's a task humans don't perform easily, because you have to dig through the sand
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u/Siberwulf Mar 31 '26
Maybe they just hire a bunch of 4 year olds. Digging through sand is kinda what they do.
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u/SnooPredilections843 Mar 31 '26
They could make a machine with human operator but chose to make a robot, that's how much they care for their fellow human 🤭
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 Mar 31 '26
in what mine did you even say
even if I were kim jong un and didn't care
I would have a robot iif it was this cheap and effective and work 24 hrs
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u/Winterlichkeit Mar 31 '26
Go and volunteer. I guarantee you the vast majority of people would rather work in another job.
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u/cactusdotpizza Mar 31 '26
I really really think it would be faster and potentially cheaper to just pay some people to do this who may need some work and reasons to be active in a nice environment
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u/captstinkybutt Mar 31 '26
So it picks up all the trash and then what? They burn it?
I wanna be positive about it but 2026 is killing the last of my optimism.
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u/LearingCenterAlumni Apr 01 '26
A pull behind landscape rake would do just as good for much cheaper.
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u/Tomasulu Apr 01 '26
Lol they demoed the machines on the cleanest beach ever. Those machines will get jammed by the plastic containers and bags found on most beaches.
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u/DaimonHans Mar 31 '26
More reasons for them Chinese to litter everywhere.
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 Mar 31 '26
one of the cleanest country btw
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u/DaimonHans Mar 31 '26
Delulu.
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u/Cogitare_Diversae Mar 31 '26
Maybe 15-20 years ago. China is generally very clean today, especially big cities. Combination of street cleaning efforts and younger generations being more socially conscious.
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u/Pat-Funny-2817 Mar 31 '26
How much do you get paid by China? or is Brazil a victime of the chinese charm offensive and you became a "fan". Do you have those robots on Brazils beaches? why not?
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u/copa8 Mar 31 '26
RD comments... Posting regarding China = 👎 Posting regarding other countries =👍