

Dustbot the street cleaning robot - RiderOfGiraffes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/8072619.stm

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dxjones
garbage robot capacity: 1 garbage bag

therefore, at any given time, there should be 100's of robots roaming the
streets, visiting various addresses (and then plopping the bags in convenient
piles for the real garbage truck to retrieve)

homework for Italian hackers: create your own "robot parade" by war-dialing
100's of robot garbage pickup calls at carefully selected times and locations

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amelim
It looks like the platform was designed around a Segway. Ultimately, while the
execution and development of the hardware is excellent, I think the logistics
of everyday life will be the ultimate downfall of the machine. How does it
perform in various weather environments? Will it require a trip back to the
drop off depot after every single bag? Just how many robots are required to
handle the amount of garbage generated every day in just a few blocks of the
city? How does it deal with human interference enroute to the pick up/drop off
point?

Seems like there are a lot of questions to be answered before I'm convinced it
is a reasonable solution.

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sunir
There are ways to make this more efficient in terms of numbers of robots and
distance traveled per bag. You can have larger dump trucks on major
thoroughfares, and use the smaller dustbots to manage the last mile to the
houses.

I'm with you that this version seems highly inefficient, but there are obvious
ways to improve and optimize.

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stcredzero
The eyes on the thing remind me of the robots from Disney's "The Black Hole."
(Those were probably given big, highly visible eyes in order to be more
appealing.)

[http://zomgablog.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/robot_vincent.j...](http://zomgablog.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/robot_vincent.jpg)

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biohacker42
Even today the mafia is still deeply involved in garbage collection in Italy.
How long before we get mafiabots?

P.S.

I couldn't resists the Futurama punchline, but please do not vote me up for
it.

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ryanwaggoner
How do they deal with theft?

Aside from that and a bunch of other questions, I'm still really excited to
see stuff like this. I can't wait till we have robots rolling all over the
place.

