Orange Sparkle Ball was awarded a Real World Deployment Grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation's Office of Future Mobility and Electrification. This grant is enabling us to put our Autonomous Robotic Pickup Platform into action through a series of pilots in the Transportation Innovation Zone of Detroit, established by the Office of Mobility Innovation at The City of Detroit.
In November 2024, Orange Sparkle Ball launched a one-day pilot testing the autonomous robotic pickup of small electronics in partnership with Intermode. The collected electronics were processed and refurbished by Human-I-T, a non-profit & social enterprise dedicated to diverting e-waste from landfills, refurbishing broken devices or repurposing parts to get the optimal use of donations and transform e-waste into opportunities for underserved communities, while promoting digital inclusion and online access.
For this pilot, we targeted startups within Newlab and surrounding residential areas. The goal of this pilot was to understand customer behavior for small electronics and the process associated with e-waste collection.
Case study below.
Case study
We generated this document detailing the goals of the pilot, key takeaways, and pilot outputs.
Contact Hannah Ranieri with questions.
