Project.BB: Let’s keep our beaches clean

I’m an entrepreneur with an affinity for innovation and sustainability. Background in Marketing (Bachelor) and Social Science (Master of Arts) and over 20 years of work experience, especially in the field of telecom and finance.

I built, and still manage, a successful communications company (RRED), helping clients with their sustainability & CSR policy, PR and Annual Reporting. The latter has become a strong niche and I have been advising a diverse mix of corporates on how to communicate about results, strategy, value creation and impact.

I’m always hungry to learn more about sustainable impact and emerging technologies. Since 2019 I’m going next level with my entrepreneurship by connecting with fellow entrepreneurs and partners to experiment with new tech in order to solve societal issues. Together with serial tech entrepreneur Martijn Lukaart I started a new organization called TechTics, which focuses on Tech for Good.

You won’t believe the mess people leave behind after a beach day, examplical for a worldwide issue: (un)conscious littering. It’s time to fix this mess, and moreover the mindset!

Project.BB aims to build a robot capable of recognizing litter and collecting it. The solution proposed is a self-propelled unmanned ground vehicle with a gripper underneath. A camera in the front is being used for navigation and object detection and a camera underneath is utilized to detect the small litter.

The development of the robot is not the means to an end. Our goal is to create more awareness around the topic by involving people in the development of robot. The robot is run by a trained algorithm and vision technology and we will improve that together people by offering them several applications, including augmented reality experiences to train to robot's algorithm. 

On average 15.000 EUR per KM per year is spent to keep the beaches clean. 2/3rd of theses costs are for manual labour.

Cigarette butts for instance are a major problem. Worldwide, some 2,000 billion butts are thrown into public space every year, so a large proportion of them end up on the beaches as well. The filters do not decay and absolutely have to be cleaned up, because every time they end up in the sea, 1 cigarette already poisons 8 liters of water. The plastic filters break down into microplastics and eventually end up in our food circle.

Along with Delft University of Technology we built a demo of a litter picking robot using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our BeachBot (.BB) stops once it recognizes litter and automatically collects it.

Supported by a mobile app and mixed reality game .BB interacts with people and asks for their help to clean the beach. We want to interact with people in a fun and digital way and let them help to train the robot. 

Through participation in a digital environment we want to raise awareness to change human behavior and at the same time make the robot smarter as we gamify the task of image labelling (to be used by the detection algorithm of the robot). A game concept is in place and we want to take this to the next level with Mixed Reality. 

In our community, The Hague (The Netherlands), littering is not an exception. If you dive with your nose on the sand, you will see a mishmash of mess next to shells, weeds and spare ribs. In the high season, beach cleaners drive on the beach at night. Together with all the shells, they throw the small waste back on the beach. Not ideal perhaps, but an alternative is not immediately available. What is already happening in terms of finer-grained cleaning work is due to a number of private environmental organizations, such as TrashUre Hunt. With volunteers they roam the beach to cleanup the what is left behind.

Of course it is better not to leave a mess at all. This requires awareness. Much of the small waste is the by-product of carelessness. What the beach especially therefore needs is a much more conscious beach user. And that is where we come in and want to make a difference. For The Hague, our hometown, but eventually expend to the rest of Europe and then making worldwide impact.

It was actually my son who planted the first seed for Project.BB. On the beach, where my family lives close by and often stays, my boy came up with a cigarette. "What's this?" He asked. I knew my business partner Martijn Lukaart was already working on the Weed Whacker, a moving robot that weeds mechanically weeds on fields. If a machine can distinguish the weeds from the sought-after cultivation, should something comparable be achievable with cigarettes on the beach? We then started talking about this idea. It wouldn't just be talking.

That's simple. The beach is our backyard and we want it to be clean. For ourselves, our kids and future generations. Real innovation and change starts by a passion for you own local environment. In our case that is truly the essence. It helps that we have a working experience in the field of sustainability and new tech. Combining the two created this unique project that we both love.

Edwin Bos and Martijn Lukaart are old comrades, both independent entrepreneurs in The Hague. Bos helps and advises companies in the field of sustainability communication and CSR. Lukaart is a serial entrepreneur slash one man idea factory. Someone who constantly thinks, cranks and / or implements ways to make the world a little better and smarter. Lukaart is already working on a robotic solution for detecting weeds on farmlands and his the proper skills of a CTO. Bos is the CMO and the mastermind behind the communications strategy to make impact by addressing issues and create awareness. For Project.BB our skills form the right mix for a technical and sociological approach. Furthermore we form a strong management team to oversee the work of our engineers and bring the development to the next level.

We recently planned a demo on the beach and invited friends and partners to come over to check the robot out. The week in advance the robot didn’t work at all anymore and we had to come up with a solution. In no time we arranged the extra help from an electrical and mechanical engineer and managed just in time to recover the main setup, so we could do a proper test. We never thought that it would be impossible because we both have a positive attitude and always deal with obstacles in a very pragmatic way.

At the start of Project.BB we immediately organized a stakeholder meeting. Beach municipalities are our main target group, so we have made an effort to get in touch with them. Our idea was found to be noble, but was labelled as a fun student project. We kept pushing and convinced the municipality to continue with us. Six months later, we signed a cooperation agreement and we are the main case study in a smart city field lab.

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With our demonstrator beach robot we want to reach a large audience in The Netherlands in the first year of our operation. 

Once we are through the first phase implementation in The Hague, we will start commercializing with a robot-as-a-service model, including a marketing package. Municipalities can use the robot for a limited period to show the beach cleaning robot and use our educational materials for an awareness campaign. The effects will be measured and reported. By using Project.BB there will be a definite impact on society, environment and on the climate, especially when the measured effects in each local municipality start to add up.

Business challenges: Our solution is to create more awareness around littering and offer a tool that assists with creating a shift in mindset. Measuring the exact impact of our solution is a bit of a challenge, but we know that currently on average 15.000 EUR per KM per year is spent to keep the beaches clean. 2/3rd of theses costs are for manual labour. We know how the robot could make the most impact if it leads to this behavioural change so there will be less litter in the first place. Our business model is currently that of a business 2 government offering. Technology challenges: The robot we have developed can currently recognize a limited amount of small litter and cigarette butts.The main challenge we face is to optimize the image recognition algorithm as the diversity in litter can be very broad. Societal challenges: The main challenge is to change behaviour and make people more aware of the effects of littering on the nature and how that impacts all of us e.g. we show how much the environment is impacted when cigarettes are disposed on the beach. Although Project.BB started locally, we already will contribute to the global Sustainable Development Goals, and specifically: SDG 11.6, SDG 12.4, SDG 13.3, SDG 14.1, SDG 15.5.

Recently we signed an agreement with the municipality of The Hague for co-funding and to conduct a pilot with the robot in Living Lab Scheveningen: a playground for companies to experiment with new technologies on the beach and boulevard.

We teamed up with T-Mobile NL to be a showcase project within their FutureLab and got selected for their Tech for Humanity track, which is part of their CSR strategy. Next to the Municipality of The Hague and T-Mobile NL, we get support from other partners as well. We have a co-op with the Delft University of Technology, RoboHouse Delft, Research Lab Automated Driving and are sponsored by Framos (RealSense camera).