Mumbai school boys build robot to clear oil spill

It took the Mumbai Coast Guards several weeks to clear the recent oil spill in the Arabian Sea. But a robot, developed by four city students, can clear it in less than 30 days.

The standard X students of Jamnabai Narsee School at Vile Parle have developed Seaswam, a low-cost solar operated robot that can swiftly clear oil spills in the ocean.

The boys, Soham Sankaran, Rushab Mashru, Yash Savani, and Rishabh Mundra, all around 15 years of age, had built the robots for the Indian Robot Olympiad (IRO) held at Bangalore on September 5.

They won the first prize and will represent India at the World Robot Olympiad (WRO)  in November in Philippines.

The four said they were inspired by the technology used in cleaning up the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in 1989, in which a tanker carrying 11 million gallons of oil had crashed in Alaska.

“We learnt from their mistakes and came up with a simple solution to clean up the spill,” said Mashru.

Seaswam glides over the water surface. It has a conveyor belt fitted with a nanowire fabric capable of absorbing up to 20 times its weight in oil. This material is resistant to water but can remove lipids like oil from the ocean. Then the fabric can be heated so the oil can be removed. Once the oil is removed, the nanowire mesh can be recycled.