Aquabots
Future Profile: Aquatic Robotics Overview
Technicians
Aquabot Programming Technicians at Recycle Island will be responsible for designing, programming, building and maintaining the robotic systems that enable the island to function. Our team of robotics engineers will integrate vision, motors, controls and remote communications in mobile and fixed-location robotic systems. The team will account for system survivability under harsh conditions, including storms, exposure to rough water, corrosive salt water, barnacles and night time operations. The engineers at Recycling Island will be on the leading edge of technology and will help to deliver our pro-social environmental and business goals.
Gamers
Our recycling facility will service both company-owned and independently-owned aquabots built from Do-It-Yourself (DIY) kits sold online to entrepreneurial game players. We'll reward players whose robots perform the best at separating plankton from plastics with additional funding to help expand their recycling teams around the world.
Aquabot Diving Drone design by Ethan Heyns
SailDrone Operators
SailDrone robots will assist in the delivery of plastics and processed materials. Using a hard carbon-fiber sail, saildrones will navigate autonomously using GPS coordinates. Learn more about SailDrones in Wired Magazine, Feb 2014.
Aquabot Diving Drone Operators in Training
An elite group of players will eventually earn the opportunity to commandeer real-world aquabots. The aquabot programming team is responsible for managing operational rules that allow game players to commandeer bots in the game as they would in actual plastic reclaimation operations.
Watch our interview with Robotics Professor Magnus Egerstedt
Questions We've Received
How would the aquabots avoid harming living things?
Each aquabot would have an internal filter that would spin to safely separate plankton from micro-plastics. Prior to running the spin cycle, sensors would detect if larger organisms have entered the filters. In addition, sea life will be able to swim under the mesh suspended from the booms.
What's Next?
Next we hope to create an educational Minecraft mod (game extension) similar to the qCraft Quantum Mod which teaches science principles to kids. Minecraft is a video game played by several million technically oriented kids around the world. The qCraft Mod was created by physicists from Cal Tech and UC Santa Barbara with funding from Google.
