Robots Dropped in Ocean to Detect and Clean Oil!

When you think of the millions spent on the BP oil spill (largest oil spill  in U.S. history and second-largest in world history) just two years ago, and the millions of marine life and 11 people killed, you can't help but wonder if anything is happening to prevent this from ever occurring again. 

Credit: GreenPeace/http://www.danielbeltra.com/

Fear not! Scientists have recently developed both a robotic fish that can detect pollution in the ocean and a robot that can be dropped from a helicopter to clean up the pollution/oil spills.

The robotic fish was developed by European scientists to improve pollution monitoring, with the goal of reducing the time it takes for detection of a pollutant from weeks to seconds. Note that this robotic fish could also be used for under water national security, aquariums, diver monitoring and search or rescue efforts.

The robotics are designed in the shape of fish, 1.5 meters (5 feet) long and cost a staggering $31,600 (20,000 pounds) each and are made to sim like real fish would. Indeed, the fish swim independently, can co-ordinate with each other and transmit their readings back to a shore station up to a 1 km away!!  Although the cost is very high, when you consider the dollars spent on relief efforts for cleaning up so many horrific oil spills over in the past, not to mention the millions given to families who lost jobs, it seems like pennies. Note that these robotic fish are also fitted with sensors to pick up pollutants leaking from ships or undersea pipelines. 

Yanko Robots Designed to Clean up Oil and Filter Water Back into Ocean
Source: http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/05/21/sea-cleaning-drone/

Now that we have sorted out how to find the pollutant, how do we clean it up? There is a very neat concept by Yanko Design that just came out which consists of a small robot that can swim/propel itself and has a   built in pump to separate out water from oil. It also has a compartment with bacteria that can degrade oil! The cleverest part is an "acoustic wave device" that emits high-frequency sound waves designed to keep animals at bay, so they don't join the ranks of the oil-soaked creatures that rarely survive.

source: http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/05/21/sea-cleaning-drone/