Using smartphones to combat river waste: SARA project receives funding from the D-MAVT sustainability fund
The SARA project receives CHF 5,000 in funding from the Sustainability Fund of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT) at ETH Zurich. It is part of the student initiative Autonomous River Cleanup (ARC) from the Robotic Systems Lab, which aims to remove waste from rivers.
The students have developed a scalable, camera-based monitoring system that is mounted on bridges and automatically recognises river waste. SARA is the initiative's latest project. For the first time, a smartphone is being used as the central element of the system. The aim is to create a resource-saving, robust system that also enables researchers and field workers in developing regions to collect usable environmental data in real time.
In the current project phase, the focus is on optimising the energy supply using external batteries and solar panels and determining the most efficient operating times.