Ocean cleaning autonomous vessel maker IWROBOTX celebrates 2 important awards

Doris

As 2022 drew to a close, International Water Robotics/IWROBOTX Co-Founder Nishantha Ruwan Wickramasinghe celebrated two important awards for his company. 
IWROBOTX was chosen for the Climate Finance Accelerator, a global technical assistance programme funded by the UK government. In addition, his company was among those chosen as a Future Unicorn by Digital Europe.

IWROBOTX became world famous when it created Doris, the first autonomous ocean cleaning vessel in the world. According to Wickramasinghe, “Doris is like a Roomba, cleaning up floating trash in the ocean, river or lake.” 
Developed completely by IWROBOTX, the customers are already using the vessel to clean floating trash, microplastics and hazardous material, with no human involvement. Using artificial intelligence and vision systems and sensors, each vessel can safely navigate itself and find trash, identify the type of trash and instantly map the location of each piece of trash collected. Currently the range of Doris vessels can gather unto nine tonnes of trash per trip.

Born in the beautiful island of Sri Lanka, Wickramasinghe had seen the difficulties small island nations faced with floating trash brought by sea currents. Determined to make a difference, Wickramasinghe knew the scale of the problem was so vast that the solution had to have a high degree of automation to scale the ocean clean-up process. To match the 24/7 pollution, the solution had to be able to work 24/7 too. Several iterations later, IWROBOTX created a platform that could autonomously navigate the ocean and clean it. 
As for the future, Wickramasinghe said, “In addition to our shipyard in Europe, we are opening a new shipyard in the USA and actively looking for locations to open a shipyard in Asia. Our order book for 2023, 2024 and beyond are very strong.”  

Besides ocean cleaning vessels, IWROBOTX is building a line of autonomous research vessels, autonomous coast guard and naval vessels, autonomous delivery vessels, autonomous personal watercraft and autonomous offshore support vessels.
Climate change is contributing to algae blooms, marine mucilage and creating dead zones suffocating life under water in the ocean, river and lakes. Billions of dollars in fisheries and tourism revenue are being lost every year, resulting in job losses in the tens of thousands. Fully automated systems such as Doris made by IWROBOTX can clean up algae blooms, marine mucilage and help heal our planet faster. When the situation is too hazardous for humans, such as an oil or chemical spill, Doris can be equipped to clean up the spill.