Meet BeBot: The 100% electric beach-cleaning robot

Speaker 1: Meet Bebot the fully electric robot that cleans beaches, gathers data and serves as an important reminder, let's get into it. Keeping beaches clean requires a lot of work, even with a diligent crew of heroic cleaners. Some small bits of plastic will still slip through that's where Bebot comes in. Bebot was developed by Marine manufacturer para Marine. And the first American [00:00:30] Bebot was purchased by ocean cleanup company for ocean is the Speaker 2: First a hundred thousand electric, uh, beach keynote robot. Speaker 1: Unlike a Roomba Bebot is, is not autonomous. Speaker 2: It works with, uh, remote control. The artificial intelligence is not reliable at the moment on the beach. There are a lot of families. We want to make sure that the Bebot is safe. A Speaker 1: Remote operator can control Bebot from up to 300 meters away, as it [00:01:00] goes, Bebot sift through the sand, picking up small bits of trash and leaving a clean strip of beach in its wake. Speaker 2: The shift has a vibrating tray. It digs the sand and it vibrates to lets the sand through. And at the same time, it keeps all the Speaker 1: Trash because protection of the ecosystem is Bebo's main goal. The design of the robot allows it to maneuver these sensitive areas without causing Speaker 2: Damage. We want to make sure that, uh, you know, first of all, like [00:01:30] BBO doesn't cause beach erosion, it runs on tracks. So basically the, the weight of the BBO is spread on those tracks. You know, whereas if you have like the beach chain trail tractor, you have all the weight that's on the wheels, you know, so it puts a lot of pressure, uh, on the sand. That's the first thing. The second is Bebo doesn't dig as deep as the traditional beach, clean machines, Speaker 1: Four ocean says [00:02:00] a single Bebot can clean up to 3000 square air meters of beach in an hour. That's seven basketball courts worth beach, but Bebot, doesn't stop there as it gathers trash. It can also gather data about what sorts of trash are the most prevalent in a given area. Speaker 2: So we, we team up, uh, we, uh, universities, uh, and what they do is analyze and quantify the trash that we collect. You know, if you [00:02:30] want to convince people to change their habits, you need to show them facts. First, we can change behaviors, what is try to change behaviors. And the second thing also is we can put some pressure on the public author is to change the low when it comes to single use plastics, Speaker 1: The target buyers for Bebot right now are hotels, resorts, and municipalities. The hope is that in addition to cleaning up after us, Bebot will also be a [00:03:00] firm reminder of the persistence of plastics and other pollution damaging our precious Marine ecosystems Speaker 2: Bebot is a constant reminder for the people that we have APRI of filtering Speaker 1: Bebot isn't the only environmental cleanup tech offered by para Marine. It's the first in a whole fan of devices called the serial cleaners. Other devices include the pixie drone, a floating remote control drone that can gather both solid and liquid waste and the Invis bubble, [00:03:30] a system of perforated hoses that uses air bubbles to guide debris into collection points. Speaker 2: The technology is not the real solution or to educate people. Also convince them that, uh, they need to change the habits, uh, maybe by reducing their plastic consumption, uh, also by recycling more and also reusing. Speaker 1: What do you think of Bebot? Would you like to see one on a beach near you let us know down in the common [00:04:00] as always, thanks so much for watching I'm your host, Jesse, or try to leave those beaches a little cleaner than you found them.