cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9523131

A beach cleaning robot nicknamed the ‘beach dog’, built by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Hainan Research Institute, has been under trial on the beaches of Sanya in south China’s Hainan province. It ploughs, sieves, collects and then flattens the sand, pulling out cigarette butts, bottle caps and plastic buried below the surface where hand cleaning cannot reach. It clears roughly 2,000 square metres an hour on a solar rechargeable battery good for about eight hours.