Exhibits from BUT will also be on display in the Czech pavilion at the Expo 2020 World Exhibition. Experts from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering have sent a robot to Dubai to demonstrate 3D printing from an innovative biopolymer, 3D printed blocks for a green wall and a project to present an easy way to clean seas and oceans from plastics. There will also be a robotic rescuer from the Faculty of Information Technology who can find a person in a landslide or under an avalanche. Expo 2020 starts in the United Arab Emirates with a one-year delay on October 1 and will last until March 31 next year.

At the World's Fair, the Czech pavilion belongs to the zone focusing on sustainability. That is why the researchers from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at BUT succeeded with their concept of cleaning the seas "Clean Ocean Project", which the Czech Republic has chosen as one of the exhibits. It consists of a process ship model and, above all, a video that presents the whole concept to visitors.

"There are hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic waste in the oceans and seas, and an estimated five to thirteen million tonnes are added each year. Disposing of this waste from the seas and ocean requires a systemic solution. We come up with one such solution," Petr Stehlík, director of the Institute of Process Engineering at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, describes adding that they present the exhibit at the world exhibition in cooperation with the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

Their solution is based on similar principles and technologies that are already used on land today, only cleverly moving them aboard the so-called process ship. The basic starting point is the effort to convert waste into a source of energy for the ship's propulsion and other processes, such as desalination of seawater, and thus not only dispose of it, but also make maximum use of energy. The collected plastic waste from the sea level would be delivered by smaller collection ships to the mother process ship on board which the waste is processed. The process ship can be a conventional container vessel, in the hull of which the necessary technologies are placed in standard containers. The waste is sorted, part goes for recycling, the rest for the production of pyrolysis oil, or its thermal treatment. The result is a material for recycling, clean water and oil that can be used as a source to power the ship itself and the technological process, or it will serve as a raw material, for example for petrochemical plants.

"We will not clean up all the oceans and save the world, but our solutions can be put into practice very quickly and can help in places where plastic waste in the seas or oceans puts an unbearable burden on people and nature," Stehlík adds. All the technologies that the concept works with have already been tested in practice, so there is nothing to prevent their use. Researchers hope to find an investor at the Expo who would like to start using their system.

The RUDA robot finds humans even 20 meters below the surface

The robot for finding people in landslides and avalanches, compiled by researchers from the STRaDe@FIT team, will be part of the CZ Robot and CZ-EX Machina rotating exhibitions. The 120-kilo rescue assistant with a crawler chassis is now on its way to Dubai and will be on view in the Czech National Pavilion from October 23. "Thanks to the bioradar, RUDA can find a living person up to a depth of twenty meters below the surface. In the development, which lasted more than four years, we cooperated with the army and firefighters, who defined the requirements for the capabilities and equipment of the robot," the future exhibit of the World's Fair Martin Drahanský, the head of researchers at the Faculty of Information Technology, BUT, described.

Thanks to the crawler chassis, the robot can overcome stairs, back up and move using GPS navigation. Even if the signal is lost, it will find its way back. In addition, it is equipped with a manipulator, thanks to which it can take, for example, trapped luggage with explosives to a safe place. The Czech exposition at the exhibition will be divided into a permanent part, which will be integrated into the garden and pavilion for the entire duration of the Expo, and a rotating one, which will change every two weeks and will address various sub-topics, such as Czech robots.

Sand like from Dubai

The BUT Faculty of Standing will also present itself at the permanent exhibition in the Czech pavilion as a partner at the Fillamentum stand. The Czech manufacturer of materials for 3D printers has joined forces with BUT and its spin-off company 3Deposition for the World's Fair. It will show visitors robotic 3D printing from a new generation biopolymer – 100 % compostable biodegradable material NonOilen, which Fillamentum helped to develop. The industrial robot was lent by KUKA through BUT, the hardware was developed by the spin-off company 3Deposition. Robotic printing will be in operation throughout the World's Fair.

The national pavilion will also include Sandiq garden landscaping blocks, which were also created by robotic 3D printing. "Fillamentum supplied us with NonOilen Terra, which is a bioplastic with a natural mineral filler, in this case local sand. We printed 25 prefabricated garden blocks, which we send to Dubai, according to the design of designer Martin Surman from Tomas Bata University in Zlín,” David Škaroupka from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at BUT concludes.

Sandiq landscaping blocks (photo: Fillamentum)