πŸŒŠπŸ—‘οΈSelf-powered underwater robot must pick up plastic on the seabed

πŸŒŠπŸ—‘οΈSelf-powered underwater robot must pick up plastic on the seabed

Tons of plastics are flushed into the sea every year, especially in the Pacific Ocean. After a while, much of it ends up on the seabed and this is where the SeaClear project intends to pick it up.

Mathias Sundin
Mathias Sundin

Share this story!

To fish out the plastic, they will use self-driving vehicles. A drone in the air, a boat on the surface and two underwater vehicles. The drone, together with one of the underwater vehicles, will locate the debris. The other underwater vehicle then goes there and picks it up to the surface where it is stopped in a vessel.

The system is now being tested at a depth of 20-30 meters at two locations, outside the port of Hamburg in the Baltic Sea and in clearer water outside Dubrovnik in Croatia.

There are other projects that work to clean the oceans of plastics. The largest and most famous is Ocean Cleanup, which has ships both at sea but also in the rivers, where most of the plastics in the oceans come from.

Ocean Cleanup thus focuses on plastic that is on the surface, so SeaClear will be a good complement.