FindingPlastic: Underwater Plastic Bag Detection and Retrieval

Plastic bags are a major contributor to oceanic macroplastic pollution, presenting serious threats to marine life and ecosystems. As these bags break down into microplastics, the hazards escalate, affecting both marine organisms and human health. This paper introduces a complete pipeline designed to capture floating plastic bags using an underwater manipulator. This pipeline could be used for future deployment on autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), It comprises four stages: detection, tracking, acquisition, and storage. Utilizing the YOLOv8 object detection model and DeepSort tracking algorithm, we were able to identify and monitor plastic bags. A simulation of our system effectively detected and tracked a plastic bag through our test tank, of Fering a promising solution for automated underwater plastic bag removal.