This summer, students from ETH Zurich will test various technologies on the Limmat for the automatic removal of waste. The Autonomous River Cleanup project is starting with rivers to tackle the global problem of marine pollution. Millions of tonnes of waste end up in the world’s oceans every year. Plastics account for the largest share, […]
Join us at our opening event on July 3rd, 2021 where we will be talking about the ARC project, what what we have done and what comes next. Follow our progress and sign up now using the link below. Register now here!
Can banning plastic straws really save the sea turtles? A group of ETH students has a more ambitious project to reduce marine plastic pollution: With their Autonomous River Cleanup platform, they want to filter plastic out of rivers, before it even reaches the ocean. Look out for their prototype on the Limmat this summer! by […]
In this project, we are optimizing the energy production and distribution to operate the vessel with renewable energy. The vessel is equipped with water turbines, solar panels, and fuel cells to takes on the challenge of a 100% emission-free vessel operation. We try to come up with a microgrid design that optimally harmonizes power generation […]
The gripper project aims to develop a gripper to sort the collected waste and safely manipulate it as required by the river cleaning process. We are using a two-finger gripper with a gantry arm to conduct the above-mentioned tasks. The system is actuated electro-mechanically which allows better control and does not require additional resources for […]
The concentration stage of the Autonomous River Cleanup (ARC) system aims at blocking and concentrating plastic particles at a specified location to facilitate collection of the plastic waste. To this end, bubble curtains or bubble barriers represent a promising tool for particle concentration using flow shaping techniques. The basic idea is simple! Air is pumped […]
In February 2020 the ARC team met with its sponsor in Austria to work on potential concepts to clean river environments from plastic debris. We worked three days on ideation, concepts, and prototyping. Prof. Dr. Marco Hutter, Hendrik Kolvenbach, Karen Bodie, Giorgio Valsecchi, and Phillip Arm supported the team with their expertise
