These autonomous boats are cleaning up Asia’s waterways

It looks unassuming, but as the three-meter-long (10-foot-long) uncrewed catamaran moves deftly through the water, it consumes waste floating on the surface in a Pac-Man-like fashion.. . Discarded plastic water bottles, juice boxes and cartons travel through a gap in the front of the boat and move up a conveyor belt..

An estimated 33 billion pounds (15 billion kilograms) of plastic trash enter the oceans every year the equivalent of dumping two garbage trucks worth of waste into the ocean every minute according to the US nonprofit Oceana..

Sidhant Gupta, the co-founder of the marine-tech startup Clearbot, which developed the boat, told CNN.. . Clearbot is trying to change that with its autonomous, solar-powered boats, like the one in Hong Kong which can gobble up 80 kilograms (176 pounds) of waste an hour and carry 200 kilograms (441 pounds) on board.. ..

Its boats can be guided remotely through an online dashboard, or set to run autonomously.. . Clearbot has developed algorithms that allow the boat to navigate around obstacles, and to analyze whats being collected providing data so that officials can act to stem the flow of waste into waterways.. ..

In Hong Kongs Mai Po Nature Reserve, a resting spot for migratory birds, a Clearbot boat has done work to remove the eggs of invasive apple snails which it can detect using an artificial intelligence model to stop them from multiplying.For that job, an agitator, a type of robotic arm, shakes the eggs off plants, and a nozzle sprays water at the eggs.. ..

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