BinWalker: Development and Field Evaluation of a Quadruped Manipulator Platform for Sustainable Litter Collection

2026-03-11

AI Summary

This work proposes a fully autonomous robotic system that integrates a quadrupedal mobile base with a multi-degree-of-freedom manipulator to address the inefficiency, high cost, and labor intensity associated with manual litter collection in unstructured environments such as rugged terrain, coastlines, and parks. The system combines visual perception, autonomous navigation, and intelligent grasping algorithms to enable, for the first time on a quadrupedal platform, end-to-end autonomous identification, retrieval, and storage of litter in complex outdoor settings. Field experiments demonstrate the system’s capability to effectively navigate challenging terrains, significantly extending the operational boundaries of conventional wheeled or stationary robotic solutions and highlighting its potential for large-scale environmental cleanup missions.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Computer Vision: Vision for Robotics & Autonomous Driving
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Learning for Planning and Scheduling

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Experiences and lessons learnt from Web-based algorithms and system deployments
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: LLM based quality controls for crowd work

Abstract

Litter pollution represents a growing environmental problem affecting natural and urban ecosystems worldwide. Waste discarded in public spaces often accumulates in areas that are difficult to access, such as uneven terrains, coastal environments, parks, and roadside vegetation. Over time, these materials degrade and release harmful substances, including toxic chemicals and microplastics, which can contaminate soil and water and pose serious threats to wildlife and human health. Despite increasing awareness of the problem, litter collection is still largely performed manually by human operators, making large-scale cleanup operations labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly. Robotic solutions have the potential to support and partially automate environmental cleanup tasks. In this work, we present a quadruped robotic system designed for autonomous litter collection in challenging outdoor scenarios. The robot combines the mobility advantages of legged locomotion with a manipulation system consisting of a robotic arm and an onboard litter container. This configuration enables the robot to detect, grasp, and store litter items while navigating through uneven terrains. The proposed system aims to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating perception, locomotion, and manipulation on a legged robotic platform for environmental cleanup tasks. Experimental evaluations conducted in outdoor scenarios highlight the effectiveness of the approach and its potential for assisting large-scale litter removal operations in environments that are difficult to reach with traditional robotic platforms. The code associated with this work can be found at: https://github.com/iit-DLSLab/trash-collection-isaaclab.

Problem

• litter collection
• environmental cleanup
• quadruped robot
• outdoor robotics
• waste pollution

Innovation

• quadruped robot
• autonomous litter collection
• legged locomotion
• robotic manipulation
• environmental cleanup