The ocean covers more than 70% of the surface of our planet and yet remains largely unexplored. Our water is filling up with plastic debris, radioactive material, oil spills, and industrial and agricultural run-offs. Even if we stopped producing plastic now, plastic debris would continue to break down and accumulate in the ocean for the next 50 years.
Protei is a durable, wind-powered solution to remediate such problems. The team has created a shape-shifting sailing robot that is unprecedentedly robust, agile, and powerful and used to sense and clean the ocean. It will be used to clean up oil spills and plastic in the ocean, as well as collect invaluable data about our environment. In order to grow rapidly, they’ve developed Protei Open Hardware – a plug and play sailing robot fleet, which can be Android-operated and remotely controlled via a simple web browser from a PC, laptop or mobile device.
In this episode, Protei team members Cesar Harada and Gabriella Levine explore Hawaii's most polluted beach in the hope they can learn more about preventing such environmental atrocities.
