Seaswarm is a prototype nanobot system designed to swim along the
ocean’s surface to collect surface oil and process it on site. It was
revealed on August 28 2010 at MIT’s Senseable City Lab
at the Venice Biennale's Italian Pavilion. The theme
of the festival was how nanotechnology will change the way we live by
2050.
So Seaswarm is made of this nanofabric which can
absorb up to 20 times its own weight in oil while repelling water and
can be reused once the oil is removed.
Is it good at its job?
The
low maintenance of Seaswarm is a significant benefit of the prototype
over conventional oil spill containment equipment. Currently used
skimmers are attached to larger vessels and require frequent trips to
port for maintenance. Of the approximately 800 skimmers set to work in
the Gulf of Mexico in the northern summer of this year only three per
cent of the surface oil was collected.
Using swarm
behaviour, Seaswarm units use wireless communication and GPS to manage
their coordinates and ensure an even distribution over a spill site.
They detect the edge of a spill and move inward. A single unit could
clean an entire site alone, or efficiently coordinate with other units
to get the job done faster.
What uses does it have?
The
Deepwater Horizon incident is the obvious prime candidate for this
tech, however it’s not all about the disasters. Frequent small scale
oil leaks are a reality in off-shore drilling, and Seaswarm was
developed as a simple, inexpensive cleaning system to address this
problem.
MIT researchers estimate that a fleet of
5,000 Seaswarm robots would be able to clean a spill the size of the
Gulf of Mexico in one month. The MIT squad has future plans to enter
their design into the X-Prize Foundation's
$1 million oil-clean up competition. The award is given to the team
that can most efficiently collect surface oil with the highest recovery
rate. A winner, I dare say, we have.
How could it get cooler?
By
being solar powered. The Senseable City Lab Associate Director proudly
stated, "[W]e envisioned something that would move as a 'rolling
carpet' along the water and seamlessly absorb a surface spill. This led
to the design of a novel marine vehicle: a simple and lightweight
conveyor belt that rolls on the surface of the ocean, adjusting to the
waves... The robot uses solar panels for self-propulsion, and could potentially clean continuously for weeks.”
