Kotoden Bus in Takamatsu, Kagawa Adopts Takanome (car version) to Survey Litter on Roads
Pirika, Inc. (Shibuya, Tokyo; Representative Director: Fujio Kojima; “Pirika”) aims to overcome every environmental problem through science and technology. We are pleased to announce that Pirika’s litter distribution survey service Takanome (car version) has been adopted by Kotoden Bus Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Takamatsu, Kagawa; President: Masaaki Ishikawa; “Kotoden Bus”), and the survey has started. This is the first Takanome (car version) survey in the Shikoku region.
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Takanome: a litter distribution survey that makes street litter visible
Takanome, developed and provided by Pirika, analyzes video of roads and sidewalks taken with a smartphone and measures the types and amount of litter in town. Image recognition makes it possible to measure how litter is distributed and how serious it is. “Takanome (walking version),” where people survey on foot, is used mainly by local governments and companies, for example to improve cleanup routes and to measure the effects of beautification measures.
In 2021, Pirika also developed “Takanome (car version),” an in-vehicle service for surveying wider areas. A smartphone with the Takanome app is placed on the dashboard, so litter on roads can be surveyed while driving on regular work routes. It is spreading mainly among local governments such as Gifu and Mie Prefectures, and among companies in transport and waste treatment. Data has now been collected over a total of 540,000 km.
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Aiming for a world where the town gets cleaner as Kotoden Bus runs
The Kotoden Group, which includes Kotoden Bus, uses the slogan “Sea, Town, Village - Connecting with the Heart.” To contribute to society as public transport, it has supported the region as a transport provider, for example by improving routes to make train and bus transfers easier, and it has also worked to contribute to the environment, such as cutting CO2, through the use of public transport.
Survey kits for Takanome (car version) will be installed on three vehicles, including route buses that run in the city, and street litter surveys will be carried out mainly in Takamatsu, Kagawa. By using data collected while the buses run their routes, we aim to find the current state and issues of street litter in Takamatsu. We also hope to share this with the local government and residents, give people a chance to think about the litter problem as their own, and consider new measures and joint projects to solve it together.
