DETROIT – The City of Detroit has announced a new high-tech robot Tuesday, April 9, that will help clean up parts of the city.
It’s no RoboCop and has nothing to do with the fictional Omni Consumer Products, so it’s considerably safer. You have nothing to worry about unless you’re a pop bottle partially buried in the sand. BeBot, the beach-cleaning robot made by Searial Cleaners, will be deployed on Belle Isle and the Detroit River to help clean up litter.
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BeBot is a cutting-edge beach-cleaning robot that is equipped with advanced technology that enables it to maintain cleanliness in the city. It can reportedly clean 32,000 square feet per hour, removing both large and small pieces of plastic, bottles, wrappers, cigarette butts and more.
BeBot is the result of a collaborative effort between the City of Detroit’s Office of Mobility Innovation and the Council of the Great Lakes Region Foundation, funded by The Clorox Company and Meijer. On Earth Day, BeBot will be deployed to Belle Isle Beach, where it will work alongside existing clean-up initiatives led by the Belle Isle Conservancy to ensure a cleaner, healthier environment.
It’s not the only robot that the city is planning to deploy. The City of Detroit will be seeking to secure funding in the future to expand the initiative with an additional BeBot as well as a PixieDrone -- a floating waste collector that will be deployed to waterways that Searial Cleaners also builds.
The Belle Isle Conservancy will operate the BeBot during public cleanup events, conduct waste characterizations, and collect and report metrics from findings.
More information on BeBot can be found on the official Belle Isle Conservancy website.