MICROBOTS INC.
Employee Needs: Research and Development (R&D) Engineers and Computer Scientists
Product Concept : Oil Tanker Microbots (OTMs)
Design Goal: Create microbots that are ultra-low cost to be used to contain oil spills from ruptured oil tankers. Thousands of these microbots will be automatically deployed upon tanker rupture. Using an expandable bladder design (called the "tick bladder"), each microbot will collect approximately 1 cubic meter of oil. The Exxon Valdez dumped 40,000 to 100,000 cubic meters of crude oil onto the Alaskian coastline in 1989; therefore each tanker would be equiped with approximately 100,000 microbots. Keeping these microbots as cheap as possible is very important. After each Oil Tanker Microbot (OTM) collects 1 cubic meter of crude oil, these OTMs will automatically cluster together for easy retrieval. Moreover, it will be important to insure that large areas are COMPLETELY cleaned by moving OTMs.
Experiments: Using your basic critter-bot we want to determine some very simple RULES that will perform two main functions. FIRST, we want to make sure that the entire area is systematically covered. SECOND, we want the microbots to work together to create large clusters of attached microbots. We need these RULES to be SIMPLE (for low hardware costs) and ROBUST in an uncertain terrain with random ocean currents and waves.
Download each of the programs and try them out with other microbots to see what they tell us about the feasibility of this design approach.