Pitch
Urban waterways in developing countries tend to be heavily polluted and urban poor live close to that. Keeping urban waterways clean is essential for healthy cities and also preventing ocean plastic pollution. However, the current global methods for waterway maintenance are labour intensive, inefficient and don’t scale. We’re automating waterway maintenance with AI and drone technology. We are building all-electric aquadrones that collect floating debris and remove weed using computer vision. They also function as mobile data acquisition platforms, tracking waste aggregation trends while recording water and air quality data. We cut down the operational costs of waterway cleaning by up to 90 percent. The Sri Lankan government spends more than $800,000 on manual labour wages and employs up to 500 people just to fish trash out of these waters. Sadly, however, our canals remain severely polluted. 30 of our aqua drones and 30 operators can do a significantly improved job at $8
