It's built on the AlienGo robo-dog from Chinese company Unitree – a relatively expensive and athletic research-grade robot, which we last encountered learning to open doors with the aid of a top-mounted manipulator arm. When we say expensive, we're talking around US$50,000 – but you may well be able to replicate this using a specced-up version of the highly impressive (and also surprisingly athletic) US$1,600 Unitree Go 2.

The VERO (Vacuum-cleaner Equipped RObot), is targeted at cigarette butts, one of the most common forms of litter. Using a pair of depth cameras and a convolutional neural network, it's able to spot butts on the ground, and plan its path such that it walks over them, switches the vacuum on, sucks them up and continues without stopping. Check it out: