The Water Drone that will Clean our Oceans
Our oceans are under siege from plastic pollution. Drones could stop waste from encroaching on marine life and ecosystems.
Our Oceans are in Deep Trouble
8 million tons of plastic waste enters the ocean annually on top of the 150 million tons already resting there. Plastic is being consumed by wildlife throughout the ocean — from plankton to whales. Plastic degrades over time into microplastics which are small enough to be consumed by plankton, ultimately killing them in the process. The ones that aren’t killed are consumed by larger organisms moving their way up the food chain to you and I. This realization led me on the path of developing new solutions to this crisis.
The focus needs to shift from removing waste from our oceans to dividing up resources towards stopping it from getting there in the first place.
During the summer of 2019, I was offered an internship to build aerial drones for testing at a local defense contractor — building drones that would eventually be intentionally shot down, in fact. I learned quickly that small autonomous drones are becoming the reality of next generation warfare. I questioned whether drones’ legacies had to be destruction, and what else these things were capable of. What were its alternative uses? Quite frankly, drones can do a lot. I predict they will be on the forefront of the next wave of technology, thanks to advances in computer vision and machine learning. Drone tech is compounding 15.6% growth per year! Okay, clearly these things are capable of a lot of destruction and automation, but what else? What markets are they not being used in currently? I reached into my own pocket for this answer. I was going to be studying as an undergraduate research fellow the next year, researching a method of cleaning waste from static methods. Could drones be applicable to cleaning ocean waste?
The answer I’ve found is a resounding yes. How do I know this? There are a plethora of companies that sell lawn care drones. Drones are also being used to kill weeds in farmers fields without the use of chemicals. Why not use this same tech, but on the water?
Some friends and I set out to build our own drone-ship that could collect waste from waterways before it reaches the ocean: the Remora Water Drone.
The Solution: Remora Water Drone
The Remora Water Drone is an autonomous drone-ship that cleans waste from waterways. It is designed with modularity in mind for a variety of waste cleaning payloads ranging from oil, algae and invasive weeds, to trash. The Remora is a two part system including the docking hub and drone. The docking hub is for charging and waste disposal. The daily cycle of the drone is:
1. Charges in docking hub
2. Leaves hub and traverses pre-planned path
3. IDs and collects trash
4. Returns to hub to dispose and recharge
This simple system allows the Remora to collect waste and dispose of it all on its own. The Roomba, a similar cleaning robot, is already being used in 20 million households. Advances in computer vision and machine learning have exploded over the last decade, allowing for the subsequent explosion of drone/robotics technology that relies heavily on ML/CV. These advances have made the Remora Water Drone possible.
The Remora operates in waterways such as lakes, rivers, harbors, and bays. The Remora Drone’s target is not to collect plastic waste from the open ocean, but to collect it before it reaches there. Because once plastic waste reaches the open ocean, it becomes almost impossible to collect. The Remora Water Drone patrols coastlines and narrow waterway openings where waste tends to collect before becoming trapped on land or flowing downstream.
A single Remora Water Drone is theoretically capable of collecting 26,000 lb. of surface trash per year. With a ten year lifecycle, each drone is capable of collecting 260,000 lb. of trash over its lifetime. Remora Water Drone fleets will be utilized in city waterways to ensure that waste never leaves city waterways again.
The Chain
The Remora can be used to help curb plastic waste from entering our oceans, but is ultimately only one step in an ever increasingly long chain of plastic production that ends at the bottom of our oceans. If our oceans are to stand a chance against industrial waste dumping and laissez-faire waste discarding, multiple solutions on all fronts of the ocean plastic chain will need to be addressed. The focus needs to shift from removing waste from our oceans to dividing up resources towards stopping it from getting there in the first place. The Remora Water Drone is an important step in reducing waste before it reaches the ocean, but is only one of many solutions that need to be dedicated towards advancing the blue ocean economy.
