City streets around the world may soon witness a new cleaning vehicle that looks like it belongs in a sci-fi movie. Called the Trombia Free, the Finnish vehicle is the world’s first electric and autonomous street sweeper.
The sweeper consumes less than 15 percent of the energy required by conventional brushing cleaning machines and does not generate emissions while at work — cutting over 3 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually, as reported by Inhabitat. Additionally, the futuristic street sweeper consumes only a fraction of the amount of water required by conventional cleaning machines. It instead combines cyclone filtration, aerodynamics, and humidifier methods to control dust.
“The current vehicle technology relies on suction performance that was invented in the 1950s,” says Antti Nikkanen, CEO of Trombia Technologies. “We simply cannot enter 2020’s green and sustainable era with such outdated solution. With the globally patented Trombia technology we are able to take down the power requirement dramatically, so turning it into a beautiful and powerful, electrified and autonomous device has been an exciting journey to this day.”
The sweeper comes with a safety feature in the form of a margin zone that detects when a person, animal, or object falls or runs in front of it, allowing it to register them as obstacles and stop automatically.
In terms of jobs, the company says that their autonomous sweepers will enable drivers to instead become operators, service managers, and route or logistics planners. As for the costs, the Trombia Free has an annual operation total of 500 hours of continuous high-power sweeping, which makes it 85 percent more energy-efficient than manual street sweepers and makes it 15 times more cost-effective too.
The company plans to kick off a year-long pilot program of its patented technology this year and start mass deliveries in early 2022. Some of its previous sweeping technologies are already being used in several countries around the world.
Image source: Trombia Technologies
