Solar-Powered Robots to Help Clean Up the Oil

Researchers at MIT are designing new solar-powered robots. Bases on what they say, a swarm of these robots can clean up the Gulf in a month. The Seaswarm is 16 feet long by 7 feet wide and weighs 35 pounds. Its conveyor belt has oil-absorbing fabric which mops up the oil. This robot is an alternative to the oil skimmers because it can potentially run for weeks on only 100 watts. “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. The oil goes into the head,” says Biderman. Tad Patzek says that deploying 100 expensive robots to clean up the oil is not going to scale up. Instead he suggests his team to make a faster approach which could make a bigger difference. "Collecting oil is a pretty low-tech enterprise," he said. "If you want to deploy hundreds of expensive machines to do that, I’m not so sure that it will scale up."

This article relates to science concepts because it is about nanotechnology. It talks about how new discoveries can help the oil cleanup easier. “We believe that the efficiency and autonomy of these vehicles will make cleaning up future spills faster, safer and ultimately more successful,” says Biderman. If this project works then humans don’t have to go in the ocean to clean up the oil themselves. The job of cleaning up the oil would be finished up quicker.

This is important to us because the oil is affecting not only us but the animals that live in the Gulf too. We have to try to fix it as soon as possible. By inventing more robots that clean up the oil more easily, the job would be easier done. Also, the oil spill was done by us so we have to do everything we can to fix what we have done.

http://news.discovery.com/tech/solar-powered-ocean-robots-clean-oil.html