Italy's trash robot is a real-life Wall-E

Anyone who has seen the movie "Wall-E" will agree that the main (and only) character is irresistible. But adorable garbage-collecting robots are only for the big screen, right? 

Not if you live in Italy. Italian scientists have proposed a new solution to picking up the trash: the googly-eyed DustCart robot.

DustCart is part of a $3.9 million research program that started in 2006 to implement robotics in society in useful ways. The robot doubles as a mobile (and cute) pollution monitor. It's equipped with special sensors that monitor air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, ozone, benzene, and carbon dioxide. The DustCart also records air temperature.

It may not solve Italy's garbage problems, but its inventors hope it might make garbage collection cleaner and more efficient, and reduce trash pile-ups. But would it actually work? Video below (it's in Italian). Even if you can't understand the language, it's still cool to see the robot in action.

One Italian commenter on the video raises the concern about the likelihood of vandalism of a street robot; another wonders if it could end up in Naples, which last year suffered through seven months without trash removal.
 

Global Post reports a slightly happier outlook for the robot in Peccioli and other Italian towns with small streets, which garbage trucks tend to have trouble navigating. The DustCart runs on a silent, lithium-battery operated engine, making it a much quieter alternative to the noisy trucks that collect garbage in the middle of the night.

What Italy needs probably isn't a robot, but a better recycling plan, more incinerators, and more dumps.

Alex Pasternack is a blogger at Treehugger, where a version of this post originally appeared.

More from TreeHugger 

• Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Electronic Waste?
• Eight Tips for Getting Rid of Stuff You No Longer Want
• Turning Trash Into Inspired Works Art
• The Mighty Power of Poo: Nine Ways It's Being Turned Into Energy