[GUEST ACCESS MODE: Data is scrambled or limited to provide examples. Make requests using your API key to unlock full data. Check https://lunarcrush.ai/auth for authentication information.]  Owen Gregorian [@OwenGregorian](/creator/twitter/OwenGregorian) on x 119.2K followers Created: 2025-07-27 12:01:52 UTC Detroit's Using Robots to Pick Up Garbage, Mow Grass, Clear Snow, and Much More | Sharon Adarlo, The_Byte Wall-E has some competition. At a city-owned beach in Detroit, a pilotless vehicle can be seen roaming over the sands as it picks up flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shore. The machine is a BeBot litter robot, and it and other mobile bots have become increasingly common signs in Motown, according to Crain's Detroit Business, as they clear beaches of litter and do other important tasks such as removing snow from streets, cut grass next to highways, pick up food waste, and even provide on-demand charging to city shuttle buses wherever they may be located. These robots are part of a burgeoning tech ecosystem in the city, which has embraced them to boost municipal services and foster tech innovation in the once-mighty hub for automobile manufacturing. (Yes, Detroit was the setting of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven movie "RoboCop.") "The automotive industry, and Detroit in particular, has a deep history of building things to make the world move," Detroit’s chief officer of mobility innovation told Crain’s. "Today, we are seeing those skillsets grow in the field of robotics and other emerging technologies aimed at improving core city services. Detroit is working across multiple platforms to bring the next generation of solutions to our city and put them to work." Besides the BeBot, there's also the Penny Pickup, which goes from restaurant to restaurant to pick up food scraps for compost, the news outlet reports. The city also deployed a robot called the Snowbotix, which is basically a mini-tractor with a snow plow attached to the front, to deal with icy streets in the winter. Yet another bot — this one controlled by humans remotely — has been tapped by the city to cut grass along the highway, reducing risk to road crews. Elsewhere, entrepreneurs are testing an EV charger on wheels, the FlashBot, an ingenious solution for when it's hard to find an electrical charger for a vehicle. The FlashBot comes to you instead, reducing range anxiety. Beyond these municipal bots, there are even boxing bots. A humanoid robot was seen walking in the city in the last couple of weeks, eliciting stares and smiles from pedestrians. The robot was walking and shaking hands with city residents as part of a promotional tour to create viral buzz for the Detroit-based Interactive Combat League, which stages fights between robots. "It’s the latest in robotic technology," league representative Art Cartwright told Michigan Live. "It’s AI-generated. It’s learning on its own. This thing is amazing and that’s why we want to own it and get people exposed to it so they can actually see how it works and understand it." In another part of the city, tech investors and federal officials gathered earlier this month for a robotics conference, Reindustrialized 2025, where the focus was on building up manufacturing in the United States. But the threat of China and its massive defense capabilities was a tense undercurrent in the conference, where tech startups showed off advanced military tech such as autonomous machine guns, drones and robots. It was a stark contrast from the cheery municipal robots crawling all over Detroit — a tension that illustrates the diverging promise and peril of automation tech.  XXXXX engagements  **Related Topics** [robot](/topic/robot) [owen](/topic/owen) [Post Link](https://x.com/OwenGregorian/status/1949440098132451520)
[GUEST ACCESS MODE: Data is scrambled or limited to provide examples. Make requests using your API key to unlock full data. Check https://lunarcrush.ai/auth for authentication information.]
Owen Gregorian @OwenGregorian on x 119.2K followers
Created: 2025-07-27 12:01:52 UTC
Detroit's Using Robots to Pick Up Garbage, Mow Grass, Clear Snow, and Much More | Sharon Adarlo, The_Byte
Wall-E has some competition. At a city-owned beach in Detroit, a pilotless vehicle can be seen roaming over the sands as it picks up flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shore.
The machine is a BeBot litter robot, and it and other mobile bots have become increasingly common signs in Motown, according to Crain's Detroit Business, as they clear beaches of litter and do other important tasks such as removing snow from streets, cut grass next to highways, pick up food waste, and even provide on-demand charging to city shuttle buses wherever they may be located.
These robots are part of a burgeoning tech ecosystem in the city, which has embraced them to boost municipal services and foster tech innovation in the once-mighty hub for automobile manufacturing. (Yes, Detroit was the setting of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven movie "RoboCop.")
"The automotive industry, and Detroit in particular, has a deep history of building things to make the world move," Detroit’s chief officer of mobility innovation told Crain’s. "Today, we are seeing those skillsets grow in the field of robotics and other emerging technologies aimed at improving core city services. Detroit is working across multiple platforms to bring the next generation of solutions to our city and put them to work."
Besides the BeBot, there's also the Penny Pickup, which goes from restaurant to restaurant to pick up food scraps for compost, the news outlet reports. The city also deployed a robot called the Snowbotix, which is basically a mini-tractor with a snow plow attached to the front, to deal with icy streets in the winter.
Yet another bot — this one controlled by humans remotely — has been tapped by the city to cut grass along the highway, reducing risk to road crews.
Elsewhere, entrepreneurs are testing an EV charger on wheels, the FlashBot, an ingenious solution for when it's hard to find an electrical charger for a vehicle. The FlashBot comes to you instead, reducing range anxiety.
Beyond these municipal bots, there are even boxing bots. A humanoid robot was seen walking in the city in the last couple of weeks, eliciting stares and smiles from pedestrians. The robot was walking and shaking hands with city residents as part of a promotional tour to create viral buzz for the Detroit-based Interactive Combat League, which stages fights between robots.
"It’s the latest in robotic technology," league representative Art Cartwright told Michigan Live. "It’s AI-generated. It’s learning on its own. This thing is amazing and that’s why we want to own it and get people exposed to it so they can actually see how it works and understand it."
In another part of the city, tech investors and federal officials gathered earlier this month for a robotics conference, Reindustrialized 2025, where the focus was on building up manufacturing in the United States.
But the threat of China and its massive defense capabilities was a tense undercurrent in the conference, where tech startups showed off advanced military tech such as autonomous machine guns, drones and robots.
It was a stark contrast from the cheery municipal robots crawling all over Detroit — a tension that illustrates the diverging promise and peril of automation tech.
XXXXX engagements
