This solar-powered fellow is part of a robot group called Seaswarm. He and his buddies are cheap, autonomous, and communicate via GPS and Wi-Fi. And 5,000 of them could theoretically clean up the Gulf oil spill in a month.
The clever MIT folks currently only have a prototype of this robot swarm ready, but it sounds amazing:
Seaswarm, as they call it, basically works like a maxi pad. A patented hydrophobic nanofabric devours as much as 20 times its own weight in oil without collecting water. To capture the oil, the nanofabric’s draped over a conveyor belt that’s then dispatched on the surface of the ocean like “a rolling carpet,” to quote Assaf Biderman, associate director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab. The robot’s entirely autonomous; it swims along, powered by a pair of solar panels. […] Unlike traditional skimmers, which are moored to larger vessels and have to return to shore frequently for tune-ups, Seaswarms can work 24/7 for weeks on end.
You can check out more photos of these amazing-sounding robots over at Co.Design. I’ll just be here hoping that they’re really as great as they sound. [MIT via Co.Design]
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