MIT's Fleet Of Solar-Powered Oil-Cleaning Robots a Solution for
Gulf Spill (Video) Images via SENSEableCity MIT's Sensable City
Lab directo Carlo Ratti and associate director Assaf Biderman
have come up with the SeaSwarm, a robot that uses nanofibers to
absorb 20 times its weight in oil, and their hope is that it can
be developed into a viable solution for cleaning up the Gulf oil
disaster. The 7-foot-wide robots sport at 16-foot-long conveyor
belt of paper-like nanofibers that absorb the oil, and are
rotated through the machine where the oil is cleaned off.
Skimming the surface of the water and powered by sunlight, the
robot can continually collect oil. They estimate that a fleet of
these robots could clean up a spill in a matter of months. The
pair is presenting the concept as an entry for the X Prize for
top ideas on cleaning the oil in the Gulf of Mexico. According
to their website, "Each Seaswarm robot is comprised of a head,
which is covered by a layer of photovoltaic cells, and a
nanowire covered conve