Case Study: Autonomous Robotic Food Waste Pickup Pilot

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 June 2024, Orange Sparkle Ball launched a pilot testing the autonomous robotic pickup of food waste for composting in partnership with Ottonomy, a leading ground robotics company, and Scrap Soils, a local Detroit composting non-profit, with support from Brother Nature Produce and the North Corktown Neighborhood Association. Utilizing cutting-edge technology, autonomous ground robots navigated designated routes in the North Corktown neighborhood of Detroit to pick up food waste for composting.

This pilot was successfully completed in July 2024. Case study and video results below.


Case study

We generated this document detailing the goals of the pilot, pickup process, KPIs, qualitative outcomes, survey results, issues and resolutions, and key learnings.


PILOT VIDEO

We documented the pilot operations to share the pickup process, reception of the technology by the community, and outcomes of the pilot, including key learnings and metrics.


PILOT AT A GLANCE

We generated this document with a high-level overview of the goals of the pilot, key metrics, community engagement, key takeaways, and pilot outputs.


Contact Hannah Ranieri to receive the full case study PDF.