Some Cities (L.A. shown below) have tons of Trash. People in the midwest are much less messy than New Yorkers and SoCal folks, but we still have our fair share of garbage.
The first "Trashbot" featured on the Urban River kickstarter was made by the Altrubots founders in a weekend with a purchase from a RC website, a trip to Home Depot and scraps lying around their 5th ward Milwaukee loft. After the first test in the Milwaulkee river we all quickly realized that scouring the river for trash and rounding it up was incredibly entertaining. The idea of a web controlled trash cleaning robot that anyone in the world could enjoy quickly followed.
This site was created as a first step to allow people to drive "Altruistic Robots" convienently from their home by providing an interface for anyone to righteously assist the preservation of our planet.
Drive the first of many Altrubots that you can help test in our lab until we have them deployed in the wild.
Soon our long-range, auto-charging RC bots will be available to solve any problem presented to it.
In the meantime we need your help to find bugs, voice improvement opportunities and support us through the early engineering process. We can't wait to keep delivering!
John is the full stack Software Architect and software engineer for the Altrubots team. He has been creating "real life video games" for paintball events and go-kart racing since universirty.
John also enjoys motorcycles, hunting, koi and science. His current research projects focus on elucidating the causation of lateral spitzenkorper formation in fungal hyphae.
Sam Reed is the Designer of Mechanical Systems and Power Electronics for the AltruBots team. Starting from a common RC boat apparatus, through several iterations advancements in the controls and setup of the trashbot Sam has performed as a key proponent in robot conception and physical creation. With years of building experience and a passion to build from scraps, trash, and reusable parts he offers ingenuity and imagination to the trashbot project and the AltruBots team
In his free time Sam is typically building robots or off-road vehicles, pacing while brainstorming, experimenting in the lab, or just scrounging parts for the next big project! With a background in physics, power electronics, and mechanical engineering, Sam is driven to invent new technologies expand our reach as humans, both here on Earth and beyond.
Mike Stewart is the Design and Additive Engineer dedicated to advancing the technolgies of aquatic and altruistic robotics
No one Tiny Whoops harder than Michael, and in his free time does woodworking, drone racing, internet controlled robots and general rabblerousing
