BeachBot is a robot that picks up littered cigarette butts and stores them safely.
Using photos of cigarette butts, the BeachBot learns to recognise cigarette ends in the sand, so the beach will be cleaner as a result of the combined efforts of man and robot. The joint invention of Edwin Bos and Martijn Lukaart was able to collect 20 cigarette butts in half an hour during the first demonstration. The robot stores them, but needs human help to empty them out. According to the inventors, the cigarette butt is just the beginning: in the future, they want to teach the BeachBot to recognise many other types of waste.
Source: Designboom