AquaSense AI: IoT-Enabled Robotic System for Smart Lake Cleaning

Water pollution due to floating waste accumulation in lakes has become a critical environmental issue affecting aquatic ecosystems and public health. Traditional monitoring and cleaning methods are manual, inefficient, and unsuitable for large-scale continuous operation. This paper presents AquaSense AI, an IoT-enabled robotic system for automated lake waste detection and classification. The system integrates a camera-based vision module with a YOLO deep learning model for real-time object detection and classification of waste into biodegradable and non-biodegradable categories. An ESP32-based embedded system enables data transmission to a cloud platform for remote monitoring using IoT. The proposed system improves detection speed, reduces human effort, and enables continuous monitoring. Experimental results demonstrate reliable detection performance and real-time communication, making it a scalable solution for smart environmental management.