In the port of Marseille came into action for the first time SEACLEARan autonomous underwater robot designed to detect and collect marine waste hidden in the seabed. The device was designed by a group of researchers from Technical University of Munich (TUM)as part of a European project financed byEuropean Union and developed in collaboration with several universities.
The idea was born from a concrete urgency: every year, according to theEuropean Environment Agencyend up in the sea approximately 626 million floating objectsbut few talk about the sinking waste and they remain there, invisible but present, for years. SEACLEAR was created to tackle this hidden part of marine pollution.
A team of robots and sensors work together to collect submerged waste
The SEACLEAR robot does not work alone. It’s part of an integrated system composed of a support vessela aerial dronea underwater robot explorer and finally a picking robot equipped with gripper. Each element has a very specific task.
The vessel, for example, deals with map the seabed and transmit energy and data to robots via a cable. The drone and the explorer robot are instead used to locate waste with precision, even in murky waters, thanks to the combined use of cameras and sonars. Once identified, it comes into play artificial intelligencewhich turns images into 3D models to understand where to grab objects without damaging them, as he explains Stefan Sosnowkione of the researchers involved in the project:
We have installed a camera and a sonar to orient the robot even in conditions of poor visibility.
During the testing phases, the system worked further 7,000 images to refine the recognition and grasp of objects.
A 4,000 Newton gripper picks up objects weighing up to 250kg without breaking them
The operational heart of the SEACLEAR system is the harvesting robot, equipped with a four-finger mechanical gripper capable of exerting a force of 4,000 newtons. Can pick up items up to 250 kilograms without breaking them, even when it comes to fragile materials such as glass. This is thanks to a series of force sensors which modulate the grip to avoid breakage.
The robot moves underwater thanks to eight turbines and is connected to the vessel via a multifunction cablewhich it provides electricity and data connection. This allows for , avoiding autonomy limits which, according to the team, would not have exceeded two hours.
To stabilize in the water, the robot is surrounded by 120 kg of floating materiala simple but effective solution to maintain position when turbines are not operating. This helps him work with precisioneven in less than ideal conditions.
The test carried out in the port of Marseille showed good resultspaving the way for the creation of a real fleet of underwater robots capable of operating autonomously in various European seas.
The project SEACLEAR 2.0 it involves, in addition to the TUM, also the Fraunhofer CMLthe TU Delft (Netherlands), theUniversity of Dubrovnik (Croatia) and Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania). The goal is clear: to develop automatic systems that can systematically collect submerged wastewith minimal environmental impact.
An important step forward for protection of marine ecosystemsoften compromised by waste invisible to the eye but lethal for underwater fauna and flora.
