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MIT's Floating Seaswarm Robots Could Sop Up Oil Spills

by Ben Deitz on August 26, 2010 at 08:43 AM

The ever-clever researchers at MIT have created what could be a revolutionary approach to cleaning up certain oil spills that stick around longer than they should. They call it Seaswarm, and we'd like to think of it as the high-tech paper towel of the sea.

The Seaswarm devices are actually comprised of a group of autonomous, solar-powered robots (no, wait: before you run screaming, hear them out), each of which is essentially a conveyor belt made of thin nanomaterial with legs. This hydrophobic (i.e. waterproof) nanomaterial allows it to absorb oil and be resistant to water as it floats along the surface. The material can take on up to 20 times the robot's weight in oil, making it a seemingly far more efficient clean up device than the oil skimmers used traditionally.

Even more impressive is the Seaswarm fleet's ability to communicate and work together without outside guidance, using GPS and Wi-Fi to coordinate a clean-up routine. Seaswarm vehicles are great at reaching difficult to access parts bodies of water, but discharge their oil locally (on a ship) without having to return to land for cleanup and maintenance. According to MIT, a group of 5,000 Seaswarm bots could have cleaned up an area the size of the Gulf of Mexico within a month.

MIT claims these guys are "low-cost," so we're hoping our visions of floating Pixar Mos will come true. Ttoo bad they weren't ready five months ago.

Tags: Gulf of Mexico oil spill, GulfOfMexicoOilSpill, MIT, nanomaterial, NanoMaterials, oil spill, oil spill cleanup, OilSpill, OilSpillCleanup, robots, seaswarm, top

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