Robotic refuse looming?

While most home garbage collection in Australia revolves around trucks with hydraulic lifts, in many parts of the world the job still revolves around a garbage worker who collects the bin and manually empties its contents into the nearby truck.

That work, however, may be a thing of the past if one of Volvo's many research projects comes to fruition. The Swedish automotive giant has revealed it's working on a joint venture with three universities – two Swedish, one American – and a waste recycling company to develop a robot that that does the job instead, and interacts with both the truck and the truck driver as it goes about the otherwise back-breaking task.

The ROAR project – short for RObot-based Autonomous Refuse handling – is a collaboration between Volvo Group, Chalmers University of Technology and Mälardalen University in Sweden, Penn State University in the United States, and waste recycling company Renova.

According to Per-Lage Götvall, project leader for the Volvo Group, the project shows how in the not-too-distant future we'll rely on robots to carry out an increasingly diverse variety of tasks.

"Within Volvo Group we foresee a future with more automation," he says.

"This project provides a way to stretch the imagination and test new concepts to shape transport solutions for tomorrow."

The three universities are part of Volvo Group’s Academic Partner Program, a network of 12 academic partners collaborating with Volvo for long-term cooperation in research and recruitment.

Mälardalens University will design the robot, Chalmers University will work on the overall operating system and Penn State's Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute will develop the interface for the truck driver.

Work is continuing, with the technology slated to be tested on a Renova-developed vehicle in June 2016.