A robotic shark hungry for plastic is to snap up waste in the River Thames as part of efforts to tackle water pollution. WasteShark is the first marine robot to take London's river by storm, with the ability to'eat' up to 1,100lbs of waste everyday - equivalent to 22,700 plastic bottles. The electric shark has been released in Canary Wharf where it can travel through 3.1 miles (5km) of water before needing a recharge. It comes at a time when plastic waste has almost doubled globally since 2000, with only nine per cent of this successfully recycled, according to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report. But Britvic-owned Aqua Libra, which is launching the shark, hope to combat this by recycling the collected rubbish wherever possible.

It must be CES time! A few years ago, the only robots at CES were toys. And as the robot toy makers at Ologic can attest, having your robot featured as the leading image for CES was still no guarantee that your robot would make it into production (AMP is pictured above). Luckily Ologic have transferred their consumer electronics experience into building robots of every other kind. The 2022 CES Innovation Awards recognize a range of robotics technologies as Honorees, and feature three in the "Best of Innovation" category as well. See & Spray is a technologically advanced, huge robot for the agriculture industry that leverages computer vision and machine learning to detect the difference between plants and weeds, and precisely spray herbicide only on the weeds. This groundbreaking plant-level management technology gives a machine the gift of vision and reduces the use of herbicide by up to 80 percent, benefiting the farmer, the surrounding community and the environment.

An autonomous'robot shark' has been deployed at a Devon harbour to devour plastic waste before the tide takes it out to sea. The'Wasteshark' was designed to tackle the scourge in ocean pollution and protect the marine area's local wildlife and ecosystem. The high-tech aquadrone was released in lfracombe Harbour, the first in the UK following successful launches in five countries, including South Africa and UAE. An autonomous robot'shark' has been deployed at a Devon harbour to eat up plastic waste before the tide takes it out to sea. The'Wasteshark' was designed to tackle the scourge in ocean pollution to protect the marine area's local wildlife and ecosystems Wasteshark can'swallow' up to 60kg of debris in one trip and if running five days a week could clear 15 tons of waste from waterways every year, according to experts.

'I'm an accidental environmentalist,' said Richard Hardiman, who runs a project called WASTESHARK. He says that while walking at his local harbour one day he stopped to watch two men struggle to scoop litter out of the sea using a pool net. Their inefficiency bothered Hardiman, and he set about trying to solve the problem. It was only when he delved deeper into the issue that he realised how damaging marine litter, and plastic in particular, can be, he says. 'I started exploring where this trash goes – ocean gyres (circular currents), junk gyres, and they're just full of plastic.