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Innovation

Army of robots can clean up the oil spill

Autonomous swarming robots could clean up the oil spill, say MIT researchers.
Written by Boonsri Dickinson, Contributing Editor

MIT researchers developed an oil cleaning robot that can absorb oil like paper towels!

Enter Seaswarm robots. Each robot is made with light nanowire mesh, so it can soak up oil 20 times its weight. And it ignores the water with its hydrophobic nature and focuses on collecting the polluting substances.

The robot is powered by photovoltaic cells and communicates with the other robots through GPS and Wi-Fi networks. The researchers estimate that it would take 5,000 robots to clean up the massive oil spill in the Gulf.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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