Clearbot

Water trash collecting robot swarms

1
 Sidhant Gupta
Founder
Entrepreneur First, Hult Prize
TEDx Speaker, Guinness WR Holder

2
3
4
What is the problem?

5
 Today trash is collected by hand or fishing nets

No tools for different scales/types of water

Fishing boat & net collection, Hong Kong

HK Govt spends over 10M USD on marine

refuse collection but most this goes to waste
due to inefficient collection process

6
4ocean’s plastic recovery program, can't
collect copious amounts of plastic waste on site

Race for Water campaign (Indonesia)

Limited to paddle boat
Damaged propellor, Superior Dive

7
 Cleaning few kmof The amount of trash flow
a river takes up to is 4-5 times the
4 days with a collection capacity of
current efforts
single paddle boat

“Ideally, we would like to clean the rivers & gutters daily. In fact, the plan was to
do it daily but we’re just not being able to keep up with it. It’s definitely a
challenge.”

8
 Local Impact Global Impact

Health Problems
Microplastics
Environment Damage
Food Chain Plastic
Sanitation
Pollution - Beach
Local Tourism/Fishing

9
Our Solution

10
Targeting The Root of the Problem

Bali, Indonesia
March, 2019

With the very first proto (MVP) of Clearbot

co-developed with local surf shop owners
who clean the surf area by hand and nets
daily

11
 Early stage testing & development

May, 2019 July, 2019 September, 2019 November, 2019 January, 2020 March, 2020

May - MVP
July - Radio Control
Sept - Flex Frame
November - AI trail 1
Updates January - Body Shell
March - Auto-Navigation
May - AI + Auto Nav Final Version,
June - Dock Development May 2020

12
Our vision: A system of trash collecting ocean drones
Clearbot - Features

Self navigating Self charging Swarm robotics

200 litres capacity 8 hours of single charge AI Vision

Classifies up
to 64 types

14
 Clearbot to Date: Not just a dream (PoC)~

Left: Clearbot Dock

Center: Clearbot Robot May ‘20 (BoM ~1000 USD)
Right: AI Classifier updated (image) - 64 classes & API Access
15
The Magic - Deep Tech
We have one of the the most cutting edge AI-Vision Trash detection models in
the world!
We’ve been developing this AI system for the last 1 year: 10000 image dataset with 64 classes

We’ve hacked aerial drone swarm technology and adapted it for the ocean surface
We can scale a robot swarm upto 900 units without any change in our architecture
Our robots can waypoint navigate with an accuracy of 2m even in rough seas

Backed by
○ AI Vision Lab - EEE at HKU
Patent
○ Innovation Wing at HKU
Potential
○ MakerBay Hong Kong
Unfair Advantage

Currently: The rate of collection with paddle boats is very low

Therefore, with Clearbot the collection rate > trash flow

Compliance

2x 5x 4x 100x
& traceability

cheaper reach
more trash per day more data

Vs. manual paddle boat collection

Based on estimate of minimum wage in Surabaya x time spent to clean canal area obtained during pilot discussion
17
Unfair Advantage: Competitors

✓ Affordable
Waste Shark (Europe)
✓ Medium collection capacity
Too expensive ✓ Compact size

The Ocean CleanUp (Interceptor) SeaBin Project

Too large for target area Low collection capacity

18
Recognition
Sept, 2019 Runner Up, Global Grand Challenges Summit in London

Dec, 2019 South China Morning Post

Feb, 2020 Winner, Alibaba Jumpstarter competition (ideapop category)

Mar, 2020 HKSTP - HK Govt STEP programme incubatee

May, 2020 Microsoft AI for Earth - US$ 10,000 Cloud Processing Credit

19
The Pilot

20
Location: Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia

Project requirements

● Trash-filled water - downstream river

● Local partners - excellent formal
collection/recycling network
● Engaged government & Industry

21
 Pilot Readiness - Overcoming technical challenges

Catering to the needs of the environment

in Surabaya:

Motor guards for densely polluted water.

(Actual 3D model)

Docks for the robots to survive flooding &

low water levels.
Testing in high sediment waters, Hong Kong
Battery with MSDS & UN38.3 certificate.
Complaint Radio Frequency (433Mhz)

Sediment water stress-testing

during development.

22
Data

23
Data & Scalability

Industry Gap:
There are no existing datasets for plastic trash
And there is no community effort into open contribution and collection of such
data in an organised way so as to be useful for applications such as ours

24
Data Collection: Process - OPEN API for anyone to use

Collecting and building a dataset for different

types of trash.
( https://clearbot.dev/upload )

25
Making the data work for us: Process

Labelling tool to
quickly annotate
Cloud storage
new data points
On-board camera and sensors

Train and improve machine

learning models for better
performance.

26
Making the data work for our clients

Clearbot’s real-time trash

collection analytics dashboard

27
Data we generate and leverage: Results
Data is evidence
● Adds accountability and visibility of the government efforts
● Government can act on the brands’ impact through taxes on plastic -
Indo Plastic Tax Policy
● Adds an accountability for brands

Data is knowledge
● Provides the knowledge and understanding of types of waste that is
dumped in the water

28
Our Potential

29
Scalability: Global Plastic Pollution Crisis

Clearbot was built rugged and is able to function using it’s swarm
system in oceans, shorelines, canals, rivers & lakes.

30
Scalability: Global Plastic Pollution Crisis

Thailand

Singapore Vietnam (Mekong)

31
Scalability: Global Plastic Pollution Crisis

After vigorous testing & studies, our team did not

Indonesia Hong Kong
find major differences between the technical
needs in Hong Kong & Indonesia - despite
examining two drastically different environments

Therefore, our team expects to be able to seamlessly integrate our

system in countries across SEA, specifically focusing on Malaysia,
Thailand and the Philippines.

32
 Sidhant Gupta Utkarsh Goel Sovina Taneja
Founder Lead Engineer Marketing & Outreach
Entrepreneur First, Hult Prize Credit Suisse, HKU Machine-Learning Soc KITKAT Events & Marketing,
TEDx Speaker, Guinness WR Holder (President), HKU RC Tech Club (Founder) HKU Sustainability Office

Florence Chan Sabrina Lerskiatiphanich Ahmed Abbas Alvi

Sales & Outreach Product design
Mechanical Engineering
UC Berkeley Collider Cup Finalist Mechanical Lead,
Ex - AIA Insurance Berkeley Robotics HKU Biorobotics, Nanopath (Prod Engineer)
Technical advisors:
Prof Edmund Lam: HKU EEE Imaging Lab, Assoc. Dean of Engg
Dr Hayden So: HKU EEE
Dr Chun Kit Chui: Director Innovation Wing

Professional Advisors:
Gloria Ng (Commonwealth Bank, Sydney)
Garry Sien (Alibaba Cloud, Hong Kong)
Dr. Wawa (Inst. of Tech, Jakarta)
Mr Hugh Chow (ASTRI Hong Kong)
Johnny Chan (Cyberport Hong Kong)
Lorraine Longato (SAP Asia, Singapore)
Amarit Charoenphan (Techsauce, Impact Collective, BKK)
Ricky Tsui (Arup)
Pubudu Abayasiri (CLP)
 Using data to improve systems in an iterative
Overcoming technical challenges manner

Motor guards for densely polluted

water. (Actual 3D model)

Docks for the robots that can

survive flooding.

Sediment water stress-testing

during development.

35
36