Scientists create robot dog that sucks up trash

Scientists in Italy have developed a robotic dog that can clean up cigarette butts while walking, and it looks adorable.

Robotic dogs aren’t a new invention by any means. From the Poo-Chi robot dog toy of the early 00s to Boston Dynamics‘ slew of robotic pooches — the tech world has seen it all.

Scientists at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), however, have created a new robotic dog aimed at making the world a better place. Powered by AI, the robot is designed to suck up discarded cigarette butts left on beaches with its feet.

Unlike your household Roomba, the “Vaccum-cleaner Equipped Robot” (VERO), is a “Dynamic Legged Unit”. This robot dog has vacuum cleaner nozzles attached to each of its four legs, which allows the prototype to suck up any detected cigarette butts.

Dynamic Legged Systems lab

As originally reported by IEEE Spectrum, the VERO is based on the AlienGO robot from Unitree but with a back-pack-like vacuum mounted on its back.

Along with its feet, a series of onboard cameras, including an Intel RealSense depth camera on its chin, allows the robot to patrol the ground for any butts to collect.

As explained in the supported journal published on April 29 2024, other wheeled and tracked robots struggle with certain terrains.

Sandy beaches, like the Genoa beaches featured in the YouTube video below, are out of the question where wheels are concerned.

The VERO, however, with its mounted vacuum, can navigate these areas. It can even climb stairs and other obstacles. Tests in a magnitude of terrains revealed that 90% of cigarette butts could be sucked up by VERO.

Of course, the IIT knows it’s not the first to do this. It is, however, the “first time that such a design and method was presented and successfully tested” on a legged robot.

The Dynamic Legged Systems Lab, part of IIT where VERO was developed, used data that said 4.5 trillion cigarettes are “dispersed” into the environment each year.