Razer designs autonomous boat to pick up trash out of the ocean

Speaker 1: Razor is helping to develop AI Marine cleaning robots and is partnering with a company called clear bot. Yes, you heard me right. Razor the high performance gaming hardware software and systems company is working on robots that pick up trash in the ocean Speaker 1: As part of Razor's 10 year [00:00:30] sustainability roadmap, AKA go green with razor. The leading lifestyle brand for gamers has entered into a partnership with Marine waste cleaning enterprise clear bot. According to recent press release sent out on world oceans day clear bots are small solar powered autonomous boats that cruise around a body of water, identify trash and collect it by using a small conveyor belt that disposes the garbage into a collection basket on its back. You may have seen similar designs incorporating a conveyor belt to grab [00:01:00] floating trash and dispose of it in to a dumpster much like Baltimore's own Mr. Trash wheel and his big trash wheel family of interceptors or the ocean cleanups large scale interceptors, which sits stationary at the mouths of high polluting rivers. The difference here is the scale of the clear bots and the fact that they can drive themselves around autonomously, looking for trash, which they can detect from up to two meters away. According to clear bot's website, a single clear box collect up to 250 kilograms of trash on a single mission. [00:01:30] And up to one ton of trash in a single day, the garbage is brought back to shore and disposed of responsibly using recycling companies that sort the waste, and then recycle it early clear bot prototypes, solar and battery powered, and used to drone to propel them through the water and some resembled, those cute cleaning robots from the movie Wally Speaker 2: Two 10, Speaker 1: We spoke to clear about founder syn hat Gupta and Kar goal [00:02:00] who say one person can operate and maintain up three clear bots at a time Speaker 3: Clear bot is essentially a surf driving electric boat, uh, that specializes in collecting waste out of water bodies. We have a camera on board. That's able to look at the water compliant with an autopilot system that allows you to kind of zigzag across an area. These two systems basically allow the robot to move in a add on detect where the waste is, collect it and bring it back to shore. Clear Speaker 1: Bot works directly with different [00:02:30] brands who incorporate and recycle the ocean plastic back into existing products. The clear bots are equipped with small cameras that identify different types of plastic waste and then catalog it onto a database. So clear bot knows how much trash there collecting as well as the types of trash. They're collecting Speaker 4: These two cameras that are there on your board. They're able to understand what kind of material the trash is bottle or it's a, it's a plastic cup. And it's also able to do an estimation [00:03:00] on, on the size of the object. So once we have the approximate size of these objects, we can approximate their weight. Eventually this data gets, uh, collected along with the GPS tags and can be shown on a map. So this is really important for scientists, for researchers, for policy makers, I guess who wanna understand where is the trash in the water, Speaker 1: Then there's the new and improved clear bot designed by razor, which resembles a futuristic [00:03:30] spacecraft or CATA The new RA or design clear bot is meant to be more marketable, thus the futuristic sleek looking design, and to be more scalable, having the ability to effectively clean larger and smaller bodies of water efficiently. Speaker 5: Basically we wanted to something that worked efficiently in the water and something that looked really quite sleek and beautiful. So yeah, iron inspiration was not [00:04:00] only sort of sci-fi looking, but also catamarans and boats and other sort of form factors. Speaker 5: The design they had actually their sort of generation two was a sort of a sort of simple barge design, quite narrow. So we actually thought, okay, we can do something a lot better. So that works better in the water. It, it goes to the water nicer and it will look better as well. So we, we pushed it, we thought, okay, let's really go all the way on this product. A lot of people didn't believe it was [00:04:30] a real project. It's like what what's razor doing? What are they doing in the boat for? But actually it's a hundred percent real it's out there. It's not on the water being Speaker 1: Tested. The razor design clear bar is using clear. It's developed AI technology, which helps the clear bots identify and record data on the different types of plastic waste. It collects this data helps drive policy with local governments who might be looking for solutions to clean up pollution in their local environment. Speaker 3: So who this helps is actually municipalities, um, and policy makers for municipalities [00:05:00] it's to understand what, where the waste is leaking, um, into the water and what that density looks like for policy makers is to understand what kind of waste is ending up into the water and therefore, uh, how policy can be changed around packaging or around taxation, uh, to make sure that we are preventing that from happening. Thirdly, it helps actually, uh, companies that are at some level creating that plastic waste, right, right. Because even for them to improve on what they're doing, they need to understand the problem first. So they need to be able to focus their energies and resources [00:05:30] in the right areas. And so generating on the ground data of what's ending up in the water is actually the first step to them, figuring out where to start. This Speaker 1: Is part of Razor's green investments initiative to support environmentally for focused startups, by equipping them with the tools to help develop their ideas. In this case, it's artificial intelligence, camera technology, and machine learning. Speaker 5: We also use a bit of our technology. So we have the key pro camera in the front of the boat to detect the rubbish. We also want us to use the, uh, Croma lighting effect. [00:06:00] We have some very sort of, uh, RGB lighting the water glowing up, and the light's highlighting the way the boat's gonna go as well. So it looks really cool in the water. So it can work 24 7, Speaker 1: According to Raz. Some of Razor's leading engineers have volunteered their personal time and knowledge to help develop clear bot's prototype into a scalable mass marketable product. So we Speaker 6: Are always looking out for, uh, companies in the renewable [00:06:30] energy, carbon and plastic segments. So when we heard and we are made aware of the incredible of work that the CLA bot team were doing, we wanted to lend our expertise. And that's how the partnership came about. Our goal is to fuel the growth of these startups with, uh, companies like CLA bot to provide a better future for younger generations, Speaker 1: Clear bot's mission is to collect 100 tons of trash by the end of the year, 2022, while per producing zero emissions from their collecting bots [00:07:00] and to produce 1000 gigabytes of data from the garbage that they have collected out of the oceans and rivers Speaker 6: Right now, 11 million tons of plastics polluting the oceans every year. Uh, we really hope to be able to do our bit, you know, to, uh, use the recycled plastics in our products. You will want to work, to reduce, recycle, and restore. And the way that we actually play our part in reducing consumption is that we built quality products so that the products [00:07:30] are meant to last and therefore actually reduces, you know, consumptions. And the last one is restore to be able to restore to the environment through will either impact investment that I talked about, whether it's clear bot and also through, uh, other projects that we contribute to, to, um, restore the Speaker 1: Environment. You can become a clear bot member by donating to the cleanup at a price that is comfortable for you. Or you can fund a full robot operation for $2,000, have a clear bot with [00:08:00] your name and branding displayed all over the robot. CNET should sponsor one of these in the San Francisco bay. I could see a little CNET robot going around. We definitely get some good press and I would have to definitely cover the news ring that be and subscribe to CNET for more technology videos on YouTube and check out our related videos on Mr. Trash wheel and the ocean clean interceptors. Thanks for watching.