4 South Sudanese teenagers have built a robot to rid the world’s oceans of over 8.3bn tons of plastic pollution.
According to Face2FaceAfrica.com, the team displayed their invention that can clean water bodies of plastics and other pollutants at the recently held First Global Challenge in Dubai.
The Global Challenge to recover “trash from the seas” using robots is an annual international robotics and artificial intelligence competition held for the first time in Dubai.
Reports indicate that 300 million tons of plastic waste are generated every year.
This figure is estimated to be nearly equivalent to the weight of the entire population. Research indicates that more than 8.3 billion tons have ended up in the ocean and if care is not taken there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050.
The disturbing levels of the pollutant that come from human activities every year, kill marine life thereby affecting global populations.
According to team mentor Richard Ring, the robot can be used to clean the Nile of plastic pollution and the Nile is one of the 10 rivers contributing 90% of Ocean plastic waste.
By extension, the robot can clean other rivers and oceans if the use is duplicated. How exactly the robot works to perform the job is not disclosed. It is thought that how it operates is considered a trade secret.
Speaking about the groundbreaking invention, James Madut, one of the team members said: “As a youth, our main point is to unite and make a change and work with the community to clean the oceans. We can do it together”.
In a related development, a young SHS boy from Koforidua by name Kelvin Amaniampong has come up with an innovation that can save Free SHS policy ¢4m yearly Kelvin, from a humble background, who is in the double-track system realized how much time he has had to spend being unproductive and decided to provide a solution.
He came up with an app called Scrolbooks with the help of his uncle to provide free textbooks and past questions to millions of Ghanaian students nationwide.
