Nice Niche! November feat. Trash Robot

November 3. World Jellyfish Day. Got me thinking about companies doing quite innovative things in an ocean and waterways capacity. I then remembered one particularly memorable group from my time with Science Gallery Melbourne : the Urban Rivers team, who transform city rivers into wildlife sanctuaries & provide an opportunity for all residents to reconnect with nature.

Now, I get it. Jellyfish don't live in rivers. But I don't care. My linkedin cup doesn't exactly overfloweth with jellyfish focussed founders anyway, so environmental sciences related to bodies of water is the most common sense parallel I shall be drawing here for article #3 in November!

Urban Rivers have this particularly awesome project TRASH ROBOT - which is a community controlled trash cleaning device, used in the Chicago River.

The cool thing about their project, was that they first prototyped the remote-controlled boat that could herd trash to a safe location to be removed THEN linked it to their website and let anyone, anywhere, log on and take control of TRASH ROBOT to help continue cleaning up the river.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqYYjssKfxM

Super cool project. The team at Science Gallery Melbourne were curating the DISPOSABLE exhibition, after the highly successful BLOOD and PERFECTION . I had joined the team as PERFECTION was being curated, and the team, led by Rose Hiscock , Dr. Ryan Jefferies , Lee Casey & Tilly Boleyn were having big impact in the public engagement emphasis on art+science storytelling to primarily engage with 15-25 year olds and get them interested in careers in STEM/STEAM.

Huge impact, actually. Continuing to this day, except now they have a whole, permanent gallery space to fill with provocative installations and conversation starters around every corner. stuff.

DISPOSABLE 'took us on a dumpster dive to find creative solutions to our throwaway culture' and whilst I had moved into more emphasis on the activation of Melbourne Connect (the Innovation Precinct that Science Gallery Melbourne is a part of, at the 澳大利亚墨尔本大学 ) - the exhibition launched in Aug 2019 just prior to a very difficult time in Australia in particular, from a climate focussed perspective. Prescient timing.

Bushfires took hold of Australia in December 2019/ January 2020 and it is fair to say the climate change conversation accelerated a fair bit.

An emphasis on sustainability and circular economy accelerated as well, with a bit more urgency, and one small part of enjoyment in amongst all this was that I enjoyed that DISPOSABLE had been curated as a proactive public engagement exercise prior to these devastating times, rather than so many other reactive ones seen afterwards, for a brief second, before the entire world shut down in March 2020 (jeez there was a bit going on then)

Back to TRASH ROBOT.

The team had TRASH ROBOT as part of the program, to trawl the Yarra River in Melbourne, collecting rubbish that accumulated outside the existing litter traps. A gamified citizen experience, actioned to help do some legwork in helping Melbourne's waterways when they really needed it.

In 2017, those waterways were filled with enough rubbish to fill 30,000 wheelie bins, which costs City of Melbourne $3million per year. That's not not nothing!

The Chicago based Urban Rivers team who collaborated with the Science Gallery team on this one, consisted of Nick Wesley , Zachary Damato , Gabe Tavas , Shash Adhikari & Sam Wesley, and they're a 'passionate group of ecologists, entrepreneurs and public servants with a collective background that spans world-renowned organisations, businesses and institutions, including Microsoft and Google.'

I thought the ability to curate a local exhibition, with a crew from the other side of the world, in this novel way that gave agency to the community to get involved, was cool. Really cool. And TRASH ROBOT really caught my eye and thinking about other ways to have material impact on bodies of water world-wide and the teams, companies, individuals and project groups that are doing that important work.

*Currently, TRASH ROBOT is not in operation, but I hope one day, it re-surfaces, in some form.

So, regarding scrappy or sophisticated , I want to see the Jellyfish, and all that fall under the marine biodiversity umbrella, looked after and I want to understand more about the ocean personally. Most of the time I'm in large bodies of water, I actually get really nervous! But it is so interesting to think about what is occuring below the surface.

And I'm especially interested by groups doing work in the oceans, in a variety of ways - whether that be conservation efforts, spatial data mapping, AI ingenuity and much more.

I think of companies like Hullbot c/o Founders Karl Watfern & Tom Loefler , who do fantastic work designing and deploying autonomous underwater robots that clean and inspect vessel hulls.

And the Seabin Foundation that operates in tandem with Seabin? c/o Founder Pete Ceglinski , doing the work as an independent not-for-profit entity to educate, advocate, and disseminate information about litter prevention and oceanic plastic pollution.

They utilise science and community engagement to help drive environmental stewardship and create more responsible consumption and legislation towards single-use and other problematic plastics found in Seabins, typically located in urban waterways.

And even closer to home here at Tractor Ventures , we've worked with the team at UAM Tec , a leading provider of advanced subsea and underground technology solutions.

They design and manufacture state-of-the-art underwater vehicles (AUVs), rovers and specialized camera systems for a wide range of commercial and scientific applications.

Their focus, paired with R&D and AI, is to unlock the secrets of the earth and ocean, with open architecture technology and in this scenario, subsea missions and data collation. Super cool stuff, Melbourne based group with Shawn Taylor leading the charge. Check them out!

https://www.uamtec.com/

There's so much more to summarise than just this broad stroke overview of ocean focussed companies, water focussed projects, conservation efforts, science and jellyfish. But it's one particular area I find a lot of enjoyment understanding more, and I'd love to chat to more people doing work in this field.

Also, Hail TRASH ROBOT!

Nice Niche! November:

November 2nd - Float

November 1st - Purpose Conference