Underwater robot scans seabed to seek out the most harmful pollution

A robot equipped with AI image recognition can identify and map rubbish on the seafloor to help prioritise clean-up operations towards the most toxic materials

By Matthew Sparkes

An underwater robot can autonomously scan large areas of seabed to identify plastic, rubber and metal rubbish using AI image recognition. The technology will help focus the limited budgets assigned to clean-up efforts on the most toxic and environmentally damaging materials.

Trygve Olav Fossum and his colleagues at the Norwegian firm Skarv Technologies created a 45 kilogram underwater robot equipped with stereo cameras, while researchers at Ecotone created a spectrometer that can identify the material an object is made of even under metres of murky water. The robot scours the seabed at a distance of 2 metres, tracing …