A boffin has invented a hi-tech drone – for picking up dog mess.
The Poopcopter is described as the world’s “first aerial bound dog poop removal system”.
Minnesota-based inventor Caleb Olson says: “It’s fully self guided, fully capable of retrieving poop from grass, and it’s full of crap.”
The Poopcopter is capable of patrolling areas defined by a user, such as a backyard or playing field, detecting poop on the ground in real-time, and picking it up.
It can then bring the poop to a target dropoff location, or even spin fast enough in mid air such that it can sky dump at any location.
Caleb says the most novel part of the project is the patent pending 3D printed pickup mechanism. The design is optimised for grass, and is extremely low fidelity, driving down cost and complexity to operationalise.
He explains: “Once the drone performs a precision (machine learning driven) landing on top of poop, all the drone needs to do is rotate 30 degrees to close the mechanism, picking up the poop.”
From here The Poopcopter can land elsewhere and drop it off, or spin in mid air to fling open the box and drop the payload anywhere.
Caleb says he is unsure of the direction to take the prototype project. One option is to go direct to the consumer, selling The Poopcopter for individuals to have their own.
Another option is – just like the garbage man, there could be a “Poopman” who drives to neighbourhoods with a van.
The van could be equipped with Poopcopters, which go to their target yards to patrol and clean yards, bringing poop back to the van for dropoff.
This is just the start,” Caleb adds.
