HIGH TECH OIL SPILL SOLUTION: oil busting robots
by Cate Trotter
The OSP robot is an ingenious solution to something that has devastling effects on wildlife and the environment: oil spills. The faster a spill can be dealt with - the better the outcome. With this in mind, product designer Ji-hoon Kim has come up with a set of modular oil-cleaning robots that can be quickly transported to the scene of an oil spill by helicopter or boat. Once deployed, the little oil-busting robots connect and contain the spill with an inflatable barrier, after which point cleanup teams can come in and manage a less severe disaster.
Currently a concept design, Kim says the clean up OSP Units are powered using built-in solar panels, and controlled using algorithms. With oil spills having negative effects - even in proportions as low as one part per billion - on the organ function of seabirds and marine animals, and harming estuaries and shoreline ecosystems, any effective solution is fantastic.
Via Yanko Design
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(Reposting what I submitted to the Yanko site)
Considering it’s really just a concept, I wish it had gone much, much further (and didn’t look so clumsy; aquatic forms are elegantly sculpted, not geometric).
Of potential interest: I used this exact same scenario as an example for a “kirkyan” device (someone added that concept to Wikipedia but, like “spime”, it was deleted; I’ve archived that page here - http://www.rebang.com/csven/Kirkyan.htm ). However, beyond not having a transreality component, it has another issue (but as I’ve been working on this idea myself, I won’t explain). Thanks for bringing it to my attention though.