Cool- Oil Eating Robots!

http://senseable.mit.edu/seaswarm/

Video

This MIT project is straight out of science fiction. The nice folks at MIT are working on a project to have solar powered robots skim the ocean for oil and other toxic spills. (See video) They are using nano threads that can soak up to 20 times their weight in oil. The sheets of threads can be recovered, heated and then reused to collect oil from the surface. They claim that an army of 5,000 of these robots working for a month could clean up all the surface oil spilled by the recent BP spill. Because of there size, they would be useful in tight areas like estuaries or marshes. Obviously the technology is in the beginning stages, however it's nice to see a new approach to oil spill clean up that does not use chemicals. It's solar, it's reusable and it can cover large spaces. Hopefully if it is ever mass produced it will also be built domestically.