PRE2016 3 Groep5
Group Members
| Student ID | Name |
| 0957942 | N.S.A. Messaoudi |
| 0958470 | J.J.J.B. Verstappen |
| 0955491 | C. van Otterlo |
| 0939540 | M.J.M. Smits |
| 0956810 | W.J.P. Goudriaan |
| 0953119 | J.I.A. Spapen |
Presentation
Introduction:
Concise introduction to the project stating the name, group numbers and student names
Current situation:
For years the ocean has accumulated a lot of plastic, trapping it in the sea’s current. This plastic soup has become a danger to the oceans ecosystems and it’s wildlife. It has become a danger for animals because birds can get stuck in the plastic, birds and fish eat the plastic. When it decomposes the fish get contaminated with the various toxic residues. This contaminates the whole food chain as birds, larger fish and humans eat the contaminated sealife. Furthermore some species can get dragged along with the floating garbage and negatively influence new ecosystems in which they get introduced.
Concept idea:
We want to design an autonomous robot to help clean the ocean’s garbage. In order to reach this goal the robot has to have certain functions: First of it has to perceive it’s environment and the plastic contaminating it. It has to know or have the ability to get the plastic out of the water, this includes the waves and current of the ocean it’s cleaning. Once it has retrieved the plastic it has to compress it, store it in safe space aboard the robot and empty the compartment at a designated location when full.
Users:
The technology we want to design will influence the users future by investing in a better environment by cleaning it, preserving the current ecosystems contaminated by the plastic and lastly it helps preventing people from eating contaminated food as mentioned earlier.
Society:
By using the technology society will improve the future by stopping the influence plastic has on the environment. Cleaning the ocean is a start to creating a better society. And lastly it will preserve the current sealife.
Enterprise:
This technology can be used by the government to clean up the ocean and may be sponsored by foundations as Greenpeace and the WWF.
Challenges:
The biggest challenges in creating a suitable cleaning agent are first of all the fact that it needs to know where it is and where it needs to go. It needs to distinguish plastic content from any other products or wildlife it’s trying to safe, otherwise it would further damage the ecosystem. In order to do the two things mentioned above it needs to take into account the currents and waves so it doesn’t try to clean sections it has already cleaned and because of the current these locations will changes constantly. A big part of the problem is the fact that it needs to be optimized in order to efficient in cleaning. If one has more than one robot, they need to be able to “communicate” to prevent them from doing each other’s work, also this needs separate optimization because of the fact that we’re dealing with multiple entities. And lastly the technology needs to be sustainable and durable itself, because it wouldn’t have a use if it were to pollute the environment more than it is cleaning it.
plan of execution
In this part of the chapter I’m going to define a plan of execution for the chosen project challenge this will include a first explanation of the things we need to execute to reach our goal. Then there will be a definition of tasks, timetable, deliverables, milestones, Gantt chart. At first we want to analyze how the current situation is and at what scale we can clean up the with plastic polluted ocean. After that we want to analyze what it takes to clean up a part of ocean. That means that we want to follow the path of signals the robot needs from perceiving the plastic up until its motherboard and from its motherboard up until the actuators which executes the action. But also the signals of the environment up until the motherboard which influences the way in which the robot does its actions. When a plastic residue is stuck in coral it needs a different approach then when a plastic bag is drifting on the waves. So the robot has to perceive its environment before perceiving the plastic so that it gathers the plastic as fit for the situation. After analyzing we want to make steps for obtaining a real sense of how the robot should work. We want to set up a list of how it should do its work by making use of the logic rules we learnt in the Artificial Intelligence part of this course. In this way we can predict how the robot does its perceiving and which actions are connected to the perceived. After that we would want to try to build a simulation of the AI in the program NETLOGO. This simulation gives a simple model of the reality. We want an AI find all kinds of plastic residues, some which are out in the open and some are more easily gathered. The big difference to the reality is that it is 2-D instead of 3-D, that means that there is no depth difference. Recently, the accumulation and possible impacts of microplastic particles in the ocean have been recognized as an emerging environmental issue. To reduce the quantity of plastic entering the ocean, existing management instruments need to be made more effective and all aspects of waste treatment and disposal need to be improved. Media attention has focused on reports of the relatively high incidence of plastic debris in areas of the ocean referred to as ‘convergence zones’ or ‘ocean gyres’. This has given rise to the widespread use of terms like ’plastic soup’, ‘garbage patch’ and ‘ocean landfill’. Such terms are rather misleading in that much of the plastic debris in the ocean consists of fragments that are very small in size while the areas where they are floating are not, for example, distinguishable on satellite images. Nevertheless, Plastic Debris in the Ocean publicity resulting from media reports and from the activities of several NGOs has helped to raise public and political awareness of the global scale of the plastic debris problem, together with the larger issue of marine litter. It is difficult to quantify the amounts and sources of plastic and other types of debris entering the ocean. Land-based sources include poorly managed landfills, riverine transport, untreated sewage and storm water discharges, industrial and manufacturing facilities within adequate controls, wind-blown debris, recreational use of coastal areas, and tourist activities(Barnes et al. 2009).These sources are thought to dominate the overall supply of marine debris, but there are important regional variations. For example, shipping and fisheries are significant contributors in the East Asian Seas region and the southern North Sea (UNEP/COBSEA 2009, Galgani et al. 2010). In general, more litter is found closer to population centres, including a greater proportion of consumer plastic itemssuch as bottles,shopping bags and personal hygiene products(Ocean Conservancy 2010).
As already said the ocean is littered with a lot of plastic, almost 80 percent of the plastic that can be found in the oceans were originated from the shores. The plastic is carried along by the currents that exist in the ocean. These plastics sometimes run ashore where they can be easily gathered by humans with a garbage bag, however often those plastics stay in the ocean and drift all over the world. Therefore we wanted to look at the idea of collecting plastics inside a gyre, because gyres have a circular current which means that these plastic will float in circles for a long time and therefore can be more easily detected then plastics which stay outside of a gyre. However after some consideration we concluded that gyres were not achievable in our project to clean up. The gyres were first of all way too big, second of all are the plastics often too small due to decomposition and third of all there are already some organizations, like the Ocean-Clean-Up , which is trying to develop a plan to clean up the gyres (Other information about the gyres can be found in the appendix). Therefore we want to have a look closer to our homes and trying to focus on the Northsea. This means that we won’t clean up the ocean entirely, but we will make a robot that will prevent the plastics in the Northsea to join any gyre at all. This plan when executed in the right way could be implemented at many other shores throughout the world. This means that other big companies can focus on the clean up inside a gyre and our robot will prevent the gyre from getting bigger.
We hope to get financial support by the government of the Netherlands, “ministerie van infrastructuur en Milieu” to be precise. We think that getting rid of all the plastics in the ocean will result in a better environment, and a better habitat for all the living creatures in the Northsea. Furthermore the Netherlands are characterized by its great amount of water, which means that for a good environment inside the Netherlands we have to start with creating a better environment in the waters surrounding the shores. Furthermore we know for a fact that the government of the Netherlands want to make an effort in cleaning up the garbage in national and international waters. Therefore we think that the government will fund our project.
To determine where we should station the groups of robot we should take the currents in the Northsea near the Netherlands and the sources of the plastics that came from the shores into account. The currents near the Netherlands looks as follows:
The current of the Northsea flows northbound, parallel to the coast of the Netherlands. This is the case for the upstream which contains the floating pieces of plastic. However, this is the case when the there is a high tide. For a low tide the current will shift southbound. This will have no influence on the placement of the robots, because the currents location will not change.
The hotspots for where to place the robots will be determined by a few factors e.g. shipping traffic, recreational beaches and fishing industry. The three most visited recreational beaches in the Netherlands are Zandvoort, Scheveningen and Renesse. The three biggest harbors of the Netherlands can be found in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Vlissingen. Fisheries can be mostly found in the province of Zeeland and in Ijmuiden. When we take all these locations into account we can set up the following potential locations to station the robots.
We included den Helder because it also is an important harbor and the pass way into the Waddenzee. Furthermore did we include the sea above the Waddeneilanden because we can use it as a control group. Our project is an succes when at the end of the stream (so at the waddeneilanden) there is no plastic found after the control group, when there is a high tide. In case of a low tide this control group will be at Zeeland. The plan is to apply robots which scan and map the coastline of the Netherlands. Furthermore they will monitor the amount of plastic and other waste floating in the area. The AI can choose which path to go to clean up the plastics. The system will be a multiple agent environment which means that is has to stay in contact with other agents to clean up the area more efficient. The difference between high tide and low tide will slightly change the most efficient path that the robot has to go, due to the changing current. The AI will gather and store the plastics found in a compartment inside its own body. When the compartment is full the AI can bring it to several spots where the waste is gathered and where the waste can be recycled. The AI has to deal with sea creatures and sea traffic. The AI has to distinguish the difference between waste and sealife. http://www.noble-house.tk/nl/red-de-zee-met-amanprana/plastic-soep-opruimen-de-ocean-cleanup-boyan-slat https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/afval/inhoud/kunststofafval-in-zee-plastic-soep http://www.ecomare.nl/fileadmin/ecomare/encyclopedie-nieuw/content-vleet.php?id=3111&language=0 https://www.noordzee.nl/project/userfiles/SDN_Rapport_Wat_spoelt_er_aan_op_het_strand.pdf
Appendix
Gyres are large-scale ocean circulations forced by:
- Wind stress
- Thermohaline forces
The 5 biggest gyres are given in the figure below.
Gyre Grootte Stroomsnelheid Aanvoer Hoeveelheid plastic Grootte patch
North Pacific
(Great Pacific Garbage patch) 20.000.000 km^2 0.01 m/s Alaska, USA,
Japan, Indonesië, equatorial counter current. 5.1 kilograms per square kilometer/ 334.271 pieces per square kilometer 700.000-15.000.000 km^2
North Atlantic
Garbage patch similar to North pacific Length: From near the equator to almost Iceland Width: East coast of North-America to west coast of Europe 1 0.01 m/s 4 Currents 1 (Clockwise) 1. Gulf Stream 2. North Atlantic Drift 3. Canary North Equatorial mean concentrations averaging 3500 pieces and 290 grams per square km 3 80% between 22 and 38 degrees north of equator (hundreds of square kilometres , shifts 1600 km north and south) 2 South Atlantic
Relative late discovered (2013) Length: From the equator to the Antarctic circumpolar Width: East coast of South-America to west coast of Africa 4 0.01 m/s 4 Currents 4 (Counter-clockwise) 1. Brazil 2. South Atlantic 3. Benguela South Equatorial Currently doing research Between 22 and 35 degrees south of equator from Rio to Cape Town 5 en 6 South pacific 49.418.000 km^2 0.01 m/s Australië, Nieuw zeeland, equatorial counter current, Antartic Circumpolar Current, Peru current 26,898 particles per square kilometer Unknown (Probably big) Indian
Random distribution with no clear boundaries 9 Length: From the equator to the Antarctic circumpolar Width: West coast of Africa/Madagascar To east coast Australia 4 0.01 m/s 4 Currents 4 (Counter-clockwise) 1. Mozambique 2. South Indian 3. West Australia 4. South Equatorial
5 million square km 8 4828 km long roughly in-between Perth, Australia, Port louis and Mauritius. 7
Assumption:
Some assumptions have to be made before there can be any calculating and investigating the project.
Solution 1:
1. The drone it’s lifetime is 60 minutes. 2. It can fly with a maximum of 100 km/h. 3. It takes 30 seconds to pick up a unit of plastic garbage. 4. Whenever the drone picks up a unit of plastic garbage, it will bring it to the closest platform. 5. There will be enough platforms in the sea, so that the drone is at all times at a maximum distance of 5 km of the platform. 6. A drone has to stay at least 100 meters away from a person/boat.
Solution 2:
1. The boat has a lifetime is dependent of the motor and the amount of fuel it will hold. 2. The speed is dependent of the length of the boat. 3. It takes 30 seconds to pick up a unit of plastic garbage. 4. When it takes a unit of plastic garbage it will put it in a compression chamber and compress it. 5. When the compression chamber is full then it will go back to a designated location to empty the chamber.
Interested buyers:
The government is probably interested in this technology. It is a way to keep the environment clean. Not only the plastic soup will get cleaner but also the beaches will not have plastic garbage on it. Which results in cleaner beaches and it’s less dangerous for people going to the beach and children playing on it.
Agent Design
The AI will be a floating robot, that can take the plastic out of the sea. It will have a container at the middle in the back, where the plastic will be put in. Here it will also be compressed. The plastic will be put into the container by a conveyer belt. The plastic will be shoved on the conveyer belt by 2 rotating arms, that put the plastic in a place where it will be put on the conveyer belt. On the 2 sides of the container, there will be 2 beaters. At the back of the 2 beaters there are is a motor for each beater. This way it can also steer, just like with caterpillar tracks. Under the conveyer belt is enough space for the electricity to steer the robot. There is enough space for the camera and other sensors on the robot. The belt of the conveyer belt has to have some profile in it or very small spikes, so it has enough friction for the plastic unit not to fall off. There also is a small wall on each side of the belt, so the plastic unit doesn’t fall off that side.
When it is stuck for example in coral or some other things, it might be a good idea to make more of a grabbing claw of the arms, while they are now just straight planks that can open and close. When we make a sort of claw shape of them, they might be able to grab plastic easier in difficult situations.
Sensors:
1. Camera, so it can perceive its environment.
2. GPS, so it knows where it is.
3. Communicating device to communicate with other agents.
4. Ultrasound sensor, so it can measure the distance to different objects.
Process:
1. It percepts the plastic unit or it gets a signal that there is a plastic unit on its way.
2. It sails to the plastic unit.
3. It analyses the situation. Is it floating or is it stuck in coral for example.
4. Find a way to grab the plastic unit.
5. The arms reel in the plastic unit.
6. The plastic unit goes on the conveyer belt.
7. The conveyer belt puts the plastic unit in the container.
8. When there is a significant amount of plastic in the container it will compress it.
Important notes:
1. It is important to note here, that it will not compress every time it finds a plastic unit. It would be a waste of energy to do that with every plastic unit.
2. It is also important to note, that the conveyer belt is not active all the time. It Is only active when a sensor senses that a plastic unit is reeled in. Otherwise it would be a waste of energy.
Below are 2 pictures of the model made in CAD. It is a global model, so not everything is on it yet.
Milestones
Given the sheer size of the plastic soup, stated in the chapter context, cleaning it up will be a difficult time-consuming process. So there are some milestones that have to be set, so the progress can be somewhat measured. Basically those milestones are intermediate objectives we set for ourselves, in order to keep the project realistic in the given time.
The ultimate goal is obviously to clean up the whole plastic soup which currently floats in the oceans, as fast as possible. Another goal is to solve the problem at the source, plastic getting thrown in the oceans. Together these objectives form the basis of the project, but later on in the process it is very well possible more milestones will be added.
Starting with the first milestone, removing plastic from the oceans. Since the plastic soup is approximately between 700.000 and 15.000.000 square kilometres big it will take years to clean it up entirely. Another problem is that there isn’t just one soup, there are multiple soups located on different parts of the earth. According to Boyan Slats it would take less than 5 years to clean up one gyre. A gyre is a circular ocean current located in the big oceans, there are the 5 major gyres. So with only one cleaning system it would still take over two decades to clean up the plastic, so this would be a realistic milestone timewise.
Another import issue is the definition of a clean ocean. The soup isn’t necessarily visible plastic, it is also the for a part micro plastics. After a period of time a part of the plastic breaks down into micro plastics, those micro plastics end up in the food chain. As a consequence water gets a certain amount of micro parts plastic per cubic meter. We don’t think it is a realistic milestone to purify the water to that extend, so we will define clean as all the visible plastic removed.
Those were the main milestones for the cleaning part of the project. But to solve a problem one has to start at the source. In this case the plastic being thrown in the oceans. This problem can be tackled in two ways, a legal prohibition or a clean-up service right at the shores. A combination of those will probably work best. Since approximately 80% of the plastic ends up in the soup comes from the shores, the rest is due to the sea-industry. So there is definitely room for improvement on that area. The ultimate goal with our platform solution (see chapter context) is to make the coast plastic free, so the soup won’t grow any bigger than it already is.
Tasks
1. State-of-the-art: what is the current situation in our field of research? (2 persons)
Literature study What can be improved?
2. Description of the robot (2 persons)
What kind of robot? (drone, floating, etc.) How does the robot pick up the plastic? How does the robot store the picked up plastic? How much plastic can the robot carry? Where does the robot take the plastic? What is done with the plastic once it’s removed from the sea?
3. NetLogo (2 persons)
Create the environment of the robot in NetLogo Simulate the robot’s behavior
4. Conclusions (everybody)
Is the robot efficient? Will the robot reduce the plastic soup? Or just prevent it from growing bigger?
State-of-the-art: has to be done at the end of week 5
Description of the robot: has to be done at the end of week 5
NetLogo: has to be done at the end of week 6
Conclusions: has to be done at the end of week 7
All the different tasks can start right away, except the conclusions, these will start in week 7.
Links
links:
drinkwaterzuivering:https://www.evides.nl/drinkwater/hoe-wordt-mijn-drinkwater-gemaakt
waterzuivering (idee): http://www.nationalgeographic.nl/artikel/oceanen-weer-schoon-dankzij-boyan-19
http://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/feiten/gevolgen-voor-het-milieu/
http://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/feiten/gezondheidseffecten/
http://www.icgrevelingen.nl/blog/2016/01/14/cleanriverproject/
Context:
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/sailboats/speed-average-sailboat-18365.html
Milestones:
https://www.theoceancleanup.com/
http://www.tedxdelft.nl/2012/10/tedxdelft-first-performer-boyan-slat/
https://plasticsoepsite.wordpress.com/onstaan-plasticsoep/
https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/ Ocean clean up
http://www.wur.nl/nl/Dossiers/dossier/Plastic-afval-in-zee.htm wetenschappelijke artikelen