Design Summary & Reader Response (Analysis) Draft 1

In the article “A Little Robot That Cleans the Beach, One Butt at a Time”(2021), an Artificial Intelligence (AI) beach buggy robot named BeachBot in short for BB, has a very distinct goal, which is to clean up cigarette butts after the smokers discard it on the beach. The article mentions that the BeachBot “measuring about 2.5 feet wide”, helps to pick “some of the 4.5 trillion cigarette butts”, “10 cigarette butts in 30 minutes”, discarded on the beach with ‘its two gripper arms’ and storing them into its storage section and unload manually at a later time.


The article states that toxic chemicals and microplastics are dangerous to sea creatures, especially when the "chemical" leak from the cigarette butt filter. Therefore, to attempt to save the situation, BeachBot creators Edwin Bos and Martijn Lukaart, co-founders of TechTics, “put the project into motion”.


The article also mentions that the BeachBot recognizes the cigarette butts by various images of it only on the sand. The BeachBot is also assisted by other small robots which will update BeachBot on the whereabouts of the cigarette butts.

With pollutants such as cigarette butts carried by the ocean waves onto the sandy beaches along the coastline, one small AI robot named BeachBot rovers around the beach in patrol for these litters picking them up bit by bit to protect the coastal environment.


Firstly, cigarette butts are the single most littered item in the world with over at least 4.5 trillion every year. The cigarette butts are small in size, easy for the aquatic life to eat by accident. Cigarette butts take up to 10 years to degrade where it contains hundreds of toxic chemicals that remain in the environment longer than the cigarette butt itself. The chemicals inside the cigarette include arsenic, lead and nicotine which heavily impacts the natural environment around us, further more according to a research report by San Diego State University (2011) found that chemicals spewing from cigarette butts are deadly to all aquatic fish species.


Secondly, BeachBot can be on duty cleaning up the beaches whenever there is a shortage of manpower. People may not be available to aid in cleaning up the beaches or even not bother to help at all. BeachBot however will follow its commands to clean up the beach whenever there is power in its battery tank or given the order to do so. Even though BeachBot currently is picking up around “10 cigarette butts in 30 minutes” which does not seem like a major impact on the environment at first, BeachBot is continuing to get improvements and upgrades. 


Thirdly, cigarette butts on the beach is an unsightly view. Nobody likes to see litter on the beach that reminds us how unclean the ocean is now a days, even giving off a negative impression that repels visitors from coming to the cigarette butt filled beaches. According to Reader's Digest (2021), Lela Nargi wrote an article showing the scenery of various beautiful beaches before pollution got the hold of them, enforcing the importance of keeping the beaches clean. 


However, the efforts of BeachBot to clean up the beaches is negligible as the damage has already been done. The amount of litter and cigarette butts accumulating over the past 20 years are already way beyond the point of recovery. According to one of the articles of National Geographic by Laura Parker, in 2015 there is an estimated 150 million metric tons of plastic in the sea, with the possibility of having the amount of trash being nearly tripled to 600 million metrics in 2040. With this much-predicted amount of plastic trash, not compared to the number 1 most littered trash to be cigarette butts, how will the BeachBot impact the undeniable future?


 In conclusion, BeachBot is still a work in progress with lots of space for improvement. It will take some time for BeachBot to fully be capable to pick up more cigarette butts than its prototype version and when it does, there will be another great helper to aid in maintaining the coastal ecosystem from cigarette butts.


Gonderman M.(2021, July 23). A Little Robot That Cleans the Beach, One Butt at a Time. MotorTrend. https://www.motortrend.com/news/beachbot-ai-robot-techtics-cleans-cigarette-butts-beach/

Slaughter E. el al.(2011, November 1). Toxicity of cigarette butts, and their chemical components, to marine and freshwater fish. Tobacco Control

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i25#block-system-main

Nargi L.(2021, July 23).What the World’s Most Polluted Beaches Used to Look Like. Reader's Digest. https://www.rd.com/list/worlds-most-polluted-beaches/

Parker L.(2020, July 24).Plastic trash flowing into the seas will nearly triple by 2040 without drastic action. National Geographic.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-trash-in-seas-will-nearly-triple-by-2040-if-nothing-done

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