"The idea came to me one day when I was sitting in the Waterfront. I was watching people take out trash from the water with a fishing net in a boat and I just thought, ‘There must be an easier way to do this’; we’re a bit more advanced now in the world,” says Richard Hardiman, the founder and CEO of RanMarine. “I thought about the movie WALL-E and the little robot that cleans up trash, and maybe having a WALL-E do this in the water would be a really cool idea.” But after researching robotic solutions, he found nothing.

“It was 2013 and no one else was doing it, so I put it together quickly,” he says. “Commercial flying drones weren’t widely available and they were super-expensive. It was the perfect time because it gave me the chance to explore the idea and develop the technology at the same time as the technology was being developed.”