This Crab Robot Is The Next Hero To Clean Trash In Our Ocean

We have been throwing too much garbage into the ocean that the consequences are showing more and more, and even deepest points in the ocean are affected. Amid a bunch of attempts that scientists are working on to address this problem, a research team has come up with a new cleaning robot.

In particular, the Institute of Robotics of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa has created the Crab Robot SILVER 2. The creation of this robot resulted from a partnership between the Institute, Arbi Dario Spa, and the National Geographic Society, which was deployed off the Meloria shoal, Ligurian Sea, Italy.

The team designed the Crab Robot SILVER 2 with the capabilities of exploring underwater, as well as traveling along the ocean floor. Currently, while traversing, the robot samples the water to detect microplastic pollution. However, in the end, the scientists want to give the robot an arm so that it can pick up bottles, plastic bags, and other junk, which will be stored until it can be removed from the sea and got rid of.

There are six nimble crab-like legs on the robot, allowing it to walk and run across the ocean floor. The robot can adapt to changes in the soil’s hardness it’s moving on, it’s able to survive bumps on the ground, as well as move around obstacles.

Marcello Calisti, a scientific coordinator of the project shared:

Not only cleaning the ocean, the research team believes that the Crab Robot SILVER 2 has the potential to act as a superior research tool to help scientists study the environment underwater.