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It’s always felt like a rather touristy place, but the Singapore River, busy as it is nowadays, still feels kind of reassuring. It’s never been a place that I’ve specifically wanted to frequent, but I’ve somehow ended up there at many stages in my life so far.
When I was in secondary school, I used to work part-time as a heritage tour guide there. In junior college, a school concert was held at a sprawling lawn near the Marina Bay Financial Center, and it’s one of my fondest memories of my two years in that institution. During my National Service, I had my basic training graduation parade at the Marina Bay Floating Platform.
Everytime I look at the river, I remember one of the first few things I learnt about it: Back in the day, the Singapore River wasn’t the pristine tourist attraction it was. In fact, it was filled with so much junk from nearby businesses (and even human waste) that you could smell the stench from far away.
Seeing old photos of what it used to be like, it’s amazing that the river cleanup initiated around 50 years ago managed to give it a new lease on life. Of course everything had to be done manually back then. It’d be a very different story today, with technology like the cleaning robots provided by Clearbot.
Today we look at:
- How Clearbot is helping keep rivers and oceans clean
- A US$2.2 million seed round for a kidtech firm
- Other newsy highlights such as Disney’s impending layoffs and a new mobility startup’s plan to challenge Grab.
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Green solutions to keep water bodies blue
Image credit: Timmy Loen
We’ve done Earth’s water bodies dirty – quite literally, in fact. According to Sidhant Gupta, co-founder and CEO at Hong Kong-based Clearbot, governments “spend millions of dollars cleaning trash from rivers and oceans.” For the firm, there had to be a better way than using fuel-powered boats to manually pick up floating trash.
- Clear use cases: Clearbot found the solution in robots – its AI-powered boats can collect up to 15 liters of oil waste and 200 kilograms of garbage each day. These electric vehicles can also serve as a surveillance and monitoring system as well as a means of transporting goods.
- Beep boop: According to the startup, these robot-powered boats are more cost-effective and environmentally friendly than their fuel-powered counterparts. Not only do they have zero emissions, but they also have lower manufacturing costs than the typical large boat.
- Summon the fleet: Gupta says that the firm aims to increase its current fleet of 10 boats to 100. It also looks to automate its processes, particularly those at docking stations.
Read more: Trash, cargo, security: a profitable robot firm’s many interests
Startup spotlight
There’s kidtech too?
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