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BinWalker: Development and Field Evaluation of a Quadruped Manipulator Platform for Sustainable Litter Collection

Giulio Turrisi, Angelo Bratta, Giovanni Minelli, Gabriel Fischer Abati, Amir H. Rad, João Carlos Virgolino Soares, Claudio Semini

Abstract

Litter pollution represents a growing environmental problem affecting natural and urban ecosystems worldwide. Waste discarded in public spaces often accumulates in areas that are difficult to access, such as uneven terrains, coastal environments, parks, and roadside vegetation. Over time, these materials degrade and release harmful substances, including toxic chemicals and microplastics, which can contaminate soil and water and pose serious threats to wildlife and human health. Despite increasing awareness of the problem, litter collection is still largely performed manually by human operators, making large-scale cleanup operations labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly. Robotic solutions have the potential to support and partially automate environmental cleanup tasks. In this work, we present a quadruped robotic system designed for autonomous litter collection in challenging outdoor scenarios. The robot combines the mobility advantages of legged locomotion with a manipulation system consisting of a robotic arm and an onboard litter container. This configuration enables the robot to detect, grasp, and store litter items while navigating through uneven terrains. The proposed system aims to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating perception, locomotion, and manipulation on a legged robotic platform for environmental cleanup tasks. Experimental evaluations conducted in outdoor scenarios highlight the effectiveness of the approach and its potential for assisting large-scale litter removal operations in environments that are difficult to reach with traditional robotic platforms. The code associated with this work can be found at: https://github.com/iit-DLSLab/trash-collection-isaaclab.

BinWalker: Development and Field Evaluation of a Quadruped Manipulator Platform for Sustainable Litter Collection

Abstract

Litter pollution represents a growing environmental problem affecting natural and urban ecosystems worldwide. Waste discarded in public spaces often accumulates in areas that are difficult to access, such as uneven terrains, coastal environments, parks, and roadside vegetation. Over time, these materials degrade and release harmful substances, including toxic chemicals and microplastics, which can contaminate soil and water and pose serious threats to wildlife and human health. Despite increasing awareness of the problem, litter collection is still largely performed manually by human operators, making large-scale cleanup operations labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly. Robotic solutions have the potential to support and partially automate environmental cleanup tasks. In this work, we present a quadruped robotic system designed for autonomous litter collection in challenging outdoor scenarios. The robot combines the mobility advantages of legged locomotion with a manipulation system consisting of a robotic arm and an onboard litter container. This configuration enables the robot to detect, grasp, and store litter items while navigating through uneven terrains. The proposed system aims to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating perception, locomotion, and manipulation on a legged robotic platform for environmental cleanup tasks. Experimental evaluations conducted in outdoor scenarios highlight the effectiveness of the approach and its potential for assisting large-scale litter removal operations in environments that are difficult to reach with traditional robotic platforms. The code associated with this work can be found at: https://github.com/iit-DLSLab/trash-collection-isaaclab.
Paper Structure (11 sections, 11 equations, 5 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 11 sections, 11 equations, 5 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Contribution
  3. Outline
  4. Litter Collection Hardware
  5. Litter Collection Methodology
  6. Locomotion
  7. Manipulation
  8. Vision
  9. Results
  10. Discussion
  11. Conclusions

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: Prototype based on the Aliengo robot. Top: Isometric view of the robot highlighting the components mounted on the top of the trunk, including the frontal camera, the Z1 arm, and the litter container. Bottom: detailed view of the container opening mechanism used to unload the collected litter.
  • Figure 2: Block scheme of the proposed approach.
  • Figure 3: Snapshot of a collection procedure performed in simulation (top). The IK layer, which provides the desired grasping configuration, acts on a simplified system that neglects legs, optimizing arm joints' positions and base pose (height and pitch) in order to reach the desired end-effector pose represented in the figure by a red box (bottom).
  • Figure 4: The segmentation mask (right) is used to compute the principal axis of the bottle via PCA. The reconstructed 3D axis is projected back onto the RGB image for visualization (left).
  • Figure 5: Snapshots of the collection and bin unloading procedures during our experiments. From top-left to bottom-right: the first two rows show a successful grasp and collection of a plastic bottle; the last row shows instead the approach to an external litter box, where the robot can finally unload the collected items at a designated location.