A Day in the Life of a Beach Robot

Meet BeBot and PixieDrone, The Watershed Center’s robot helpers

By Kierstin Gunsberg | July 8, 2023

In an era where technology is integrated into just about everything, even our beaches are getting the high-tech treatment.

The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay has recently received two cutting-edge beach cleaning robots, BeBot and PixieDrone, through the Council of the Great Lakes Region Foundation, thanks to a generous donation from Meijer. This year, these “robots” are commencing their first summer patrolling TC’s shores and waterways. Here’s how they’re helping to keep our beaches safe and plastic-free for beachgoers and wildlife alike.

The Bots

Meet BeBot. Resembling a dune buggy more than a humanoid, the stealthy beach-cleaning robot was designed by Searial Cleaners, a division of Poralu Marine (an international company that designs sustainable marinas).

A totally green cleaning machine free of gas emissions, BeBot starts its shift by announcing its presence, ensuring the safety of any critters (or humans) nearby. Once the literal coast is clear, BeBot gets to work, preserving the tranquility of a northern Michigan lakeside sunrise by sifting through the sand in silence while collecting plastic pollution and other trash that’s found its way onto the beach.

Its primary targets are the usual suspects: bottle caps, plastic bottles, and cigarette butts that get littered or blown onto the beach during these most active summer months.

Meanwhile, BeBot’s partner in waste-collection, PixieDrone, is designed to tackle the water nearby. As the name suggests, this bot is actually a drone that floats on the water’s surface, reminiscent of a small boat. Pixie’s duty is to collect floating debris that could interfere with both marine life and marine safety, including glass, metal, plastic, rubber, and even organic waste.

The drone’s secret weapon against crashing into obstacles is its LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology, which uses laser beams to measure distances and create precise 3D maps or detect objects, allowing the drone to gracefully maneuver around boats, marinas, buoys, and any seagulls waiting to be tossed a spare fry.

The bots, while intuitive, aren’t autonomous. Like a remote-controlled car, they’re operated on-site by The Watershed Center’s interns and can be seen out and about sifting and sorting up to twice a week.

Their Reach

The technology is certainly a step forward in streamlining the reduction of environmental pollution, but it’s not without limitations, and The Watershed is still learning about the cool stuff their new technology can accomplish while adapting to its roadblocks.

BeBot, for example, is a pretty hefty machine that can’t yet navigate the steep terrain of bluffs, whereas PixieDrone is less suited for open water and does its best work in marinas and harbors where trash gathers in corners convenient to the bot’s collecting abilities. And both need to be manually unloaded and then loaded onto a trailer for transport by their human operators, who are starting PixieDrone and BeBot out on Traverse City’s public beaches, thanks to an agreement with the city.

The Watershed Center, which advocates for waterways across all of Grand Traverse County as well as Leelanau, Antrim, and Kalkaska counties, is hoping to expand the bots’ work, especially on inland lakes that don’t receive regular grooming but still see a lot of boating, swimming, and sandcastle action from May through August.

At the moment, they’re in talks with leaders outside of Traverse City to use this technology across the 1,000 square miles of watershed that the organization protects. The endeavor is part of a broader initiative called the Great Lakes CleanUP to reduce the threat of microplastics in the Great Lakes, which provides drinking water to over 40,000 Americans and Canadians.

Their Impact

BeBot or not, the program reminds us that we can all do our part to mitigate our impact on the freshwater that makes our area so special. And, while visitors to the bays, lakes, rivers and streams of the region can start by leaving these spaces cleaner than they found them, Christine Crissman, executive director of The Watershed Center, notes that our efforts to protect the Great Lakes must be more intrinsic.

“Providing trash receptacles and signage at public beaches can help educate residents and visitors alike about the harm trash can cause when it enters our waterways,” she says. “It also starts with decisions people make every day, from not purchasing single-use plastic to properly [implementing] recycling practices.”

Of the most common offenders, she says the number one find after cleanup is cigarette butts, highlighting that the challenge isn’t so much what washes up onto the shores, but what’s left behind.

And it’s not just litterbugs that create issues for our waterways; it’s also some of the current infrastructure. As Crissman explains, “The way our stormwater system works in Traverse City, we collect all of the stormwater off of our roads and parking lots, and all of that goes directly either into a river that makes its way into the bay or into the bay itself.”

That’s why the impact of runoff from a summertime downpour presents the risk of elevated E. coli levels, particularly for beaches near storm drain outlets, something The Watershed is tasked with monitoring. “We help coordinate the beach testing program where they test for E. coli bacteria in the summer months at the beaches,” says Crissman.

In a place where the tranquility of fresh water is a draw for both locals and visitors, Crissman says one of the best ways to rein in the negative effects of water pollution is through engagement, something The Watershed is finding BeBot and PixieDrone inspire in those who come across them in action.

“People are going to come out and ask us what we’re doing, and so it’s a chance for us to talk to people about plastic pollution,” she explains.

Crissman says the operators take these interactions as an opportunity for hands-on education, pulling out vials of little plastic particles and man-made fragments to share with curious observers. “Then we can help provide information to people about what we’re doing and why, and then also try to help reduce plastic from getting into the environment in the first place through that sort of education.”

Photo courtesy of The Watershed Center.