Ideonella - The plastic eating robot

It is estimated that 500k metric tons of plastic are dumped in water bodies per year (by littering, flushing items down the drain, and leftover fishing materials) - more plastic than the equivalent forty thousand blue whales in the ocean. Plastic takes 500 to 1000 years to degrade turning into microplastics that are ingested by fish and eventually, us. At this rate, by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea (Kaandorp, 2023). Growth in computing technology is fueling robotic applications. Using underwater robots is far safer than using humans. This paper describes a way to solve the problem of removing floating pieces of plastic from water surfaces using Unmanned Surface Vehicles swarms without endangering marine life.