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HOW ROBOTICS IS
HOW ROBOTICS IS
REVOLUTIONIZING SUSTAINABILITY
REVOLUTIONIZING SUSTAINABILITY
Industries and companies have been trying to find ways to utilize robots to improve their processes, allowing businesses to be more efficient and profitable. Along with these benefits, it is becoming more and more evident that robotics helps improve sustainability efforts. Robots in today’s world are helping to fight climate change, improve recycling and make manufacturing more sustainable.
Plant Trees to Help Fight Climate Change
A company called SkyGrow made a robot called the Growbot. This robot can plant trees 10 times faster than people can. It also costs half as much to plant trees using the Growbot. The robot plants bigger trees, not just seeds, so the trees have a better chance of growing in their new home. Planting more trees helps reduce the bad carbon dioxide in the air. Trees turn this carbon dioxide into good oxygen that we can breathe. SkyGrow plans to make 4,500 Growbots to help plant trees and fix forests around the world.
Eat Water Pollution
The University of Bristol has been developing the “Row-bot” in order to improve their efforts of supporting climate change. The Row-bot swims around in the ocean and digests the pollution that is in the water and turns it into energy that can power the boat’s motor. Jonathan Rossiter, the host of a TED Talk for the Row-bot, suggested that this technology could help reduce the negative effects from tankers that flush their oil tanks into the ocean. He also noted that it could help reduce the impact of chemicals that are washed into rivers and eventually end up in the oceans.
Clean Bodies of Water
We have all seen the horrible images that show the danger to marine life when we are not careful with our waste. One company, Urban Rivers, has made cleaning the waters their mission. They developed a trash robot that floats along the Chicago River in order to keep the waterway clean. They noticed the need for river cleanup when they installed floating wetlands and an urban garden and trash kept getting stuck in the plants. Instead of sending someone out each day to clean it, they decided to develop a robot that keeps the plants clean and prevents the animals from accidentally eating the harmful waste. What's really cool about it is that anyone can log in from the internet and can control the robot making it move around in the water and collect garbage for points like a game.
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Reduce Carbon Emissions
Many factories and ports send out a lot of carbon into the air, which is bad for the Earth and causes climate change. The Port of Long Beach is using robots to help reduce the carbon it makes. The new robots don’t pollute the air, and they help the port use fewer trucks and tools that cause pollution. Robots can do many jobs and help replace old, harmful equipment with cleaner, better options. We need to find more ways to use robots to keep the air clean.
Robots Help Sort Recycled Materials
Robots and machines are learning to sort recycled items into different groups based on the material they are made from. This helps make the recycling process better and faster, and it costs less money than having people do all the sorting. Companies are using smart robots to help reduce mistakes and make recycling work more smoothly. Some robots can sort about 2,000 items every hour, while people can only sort about 800 items in the same time.
At a recycling plant in Austin, Texas, there is a robot with two arms that can pick up different kinds of plastic. The robot can sort plastics by their type, color, shape, and size, and it can sort 12 different types of materials.
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Robots Making Manufacturing Sustainable
In addition to increasing productivity, efficiency, and product quality in manufacturing, robots are now starting to help manufacturers become more sustainable by reducing waste and the amount of energy used. One way that robots are improving the sustainable practices of manufacturers is by reducing waste because they can be extremely accurate and minimize the error. This helps the factory become more efficient in that everything that they produce is being used, and there is no waste that is discarded that would impact the environment.
One company that is using robots is Apple, and they use them in their recycling process of discarded iPhones. Their robot is tasked with picking out reusable pieces from old iPhones in order to use them for other products. This is sustainable because they are reducing waste, and they then don’t have to make an additional part for a new product. If they reuse the special metals inside the phones, people don’t have to mine for more. This task used to be done by shredders, which did not separate the components well, or by human hands, which is inefficient and makes workers susceptible to injury while dealing with sharp objects and chemicals.
Robots also aid in the energy-saving process because they do not require as much energy to operate as humans do. For example, humans need a factory with sufficient lighting and heat, whereas robots can work in a cold and dark factory. This drastically reduces the amount of energy used in the production process. It is estimated that for every 1C reduced in factory heat levels, there is a potential saving of up to 8%. In addition, up to 20% of energy savings can be reached if the plant turns off any unnecessary lighting.
Whether it’s reducing waste or reducing the amount of energy needed to run the plant, robots are undoubtedly helping manufacturers become greener.
Why We Need Sustainable Robots
We need more robots in our society in the various applications that were mentioned if we are going to take further steps to make our planet a better place to live right now and for future generations. They are vital in taking steps to reduce pollution and emissions of our manufacturing methods, and they are a crucial part to optimizing the manufacturing process to reduce the amount of energy consumed. They reduce our reliance on larger and more harmful vehicles and machines, and they help eliminate and clean-up waste in a variety of ways. The sustainable opportunities that involve robots are endless, and we need to start applying them in new situations in order to make our earth a better place to live.
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