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What could help in dealing with people who don’t clean up after their dogs?

Answer: pooper-scooper drones

Long the plague of neighborhood sidewalks and local parks are dog owners who don’t have bags to properly pick up and dispose of their four-legged friend’s droppings. But one Dutch entrepreneur is taking a high-tech approach in addressing the problem. 

The pooper-scooper drone is actually a two-bot system. Watchdog 1 is an aerial drone that flies over an area and senses any pickup needs via a thermal camera. It then notes the target’s GPS coordinates, which it sends to a robot on the ground: Patroldog1, which is then dispatched to remove the offending pile. In addition to the thermal imaging system, which can only be used to locate fresh deposits, Watchdog1 has also been programmed with recognition software that allows it to sense older leavings.

Fun fact: “Dog poop” in Dutch is hondenpoep. The more you know!