Meet DustCart, a real-life Wall-E, created by Italian scientist Paolo Dario and colleagues at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna University.
The robotic trash bin can revolutionize trash collection in small Italian towns with small and windy streets inaccessible to large garbage trucks:
Like a taxi answering a call, DustCart rode across the terrace to meet the caller.
Once the robot arrived, it asked for a personal ID number that both identifies the user and tracks the garbage. It also asked for the kind of trash being dumped — organic, recyclable or waste. DustCart then opened its belly bin, collected the trash and took it to a fake dumping site.
Fulvio Paolocci and Angelica Marin of GlobalPost has the story (and lots of photos!): Link
(Photo: Fulvio Paolocci/Global Post)