Solar Power Might Be The Answer To The Gulf Spill
With the clean up of the latest Gulf spill seeming to lag on and on, it may be completed in 30 days. Scientists are considering bringing in a fleet of solar powered robots that will be able to clean up the spill in record time. The robots, called “Seaswarm” are now being developed at MIT which incorporate an oil absorbing nanofabric that was created by Francesco Stellacci, a MIT professor.
The prototype measures at 16 feet long and 7 feet wide and weighs just 35 pounds. There are two square solar panels located at the head which propel the robot on top of the water’s surface. As the robot moves, a thin, flexible conveyor belt that is covered with the nanofabric will rotate mopping up the oil. Researchers estimate that a fleet of between 5,000 and 10,000 Seaswarm robots can cover a area the size of the Gulf in a month if they are working non-stop.
“We say these vehicles are autonomous because they provide their own energy, propel themselves along the surface of the ocean and therefore we don’t need humans to collect the oil,” Discovery News quoted Biderman as saying. One lab reports that one Seaswarm can run for several weeks on 100 watts with the capacity to absorb several gallons of oil per hour. The robots are equipped with both GPS systems and wireless communications that will allow them to communicate with other robots and be operated manually with a remote.
“Robotic strategies are intriguing, and they create further opportunity to consider responses in the future,” said Ron Kendall at Texas Tech University. “Collecting oil is a pretty low-tech enterprise. If you want to deploy hundreds of expensive machines to do that, I’m not so sure that it will scale up,” he said.