You find humans, you find garbage. And, for a long time, it seemed inevitable that there would always be garbagemen, too, to collect that refuse. A new project by carmaker Volvo, recycling company Renova, Sweden™s Chalmers University of Technology and Mälardalen University, and Penn State University wants to create robot assistants for garbage trucks. With automation, a human driver can stick to the road, and a robot can do the literal heavy lifting.
Dubbed Robot-based Autonomous Refuse handling, or ROAR, the project will feature a robot designed by Mälardalen University, control system designed by Chalmers University, and a control panel designed by Penn State. Combined, these efforts will hopefully yield a robot that can grab trash and toss it on board a Renova waste truck by June 2016.
Volvo™s release on the matter suggests the purpose behind ROAR is a system that collects garbage œwithout waking the sleeping families and without heavy lifting for the refuse truck™s driver,� but there™s little evidence yet that humanoid robots or quieter or more graceful than actual humans. In terms of cost, robots can certainly be cheaper than people, if the same already-employed driver is now also responsible for steering a pair of robots instead of waiting for a couple people to hop off, grab trash, and get back on.
But that assumes waste collection companies will even still want human drivers in the future. If they™re looking to completely automate the garbage collection process, the next step is tohand the keys over to a robot.
Source: www.popsci.com
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