Oceans Inside| Trash Cleanup
Project Details
Awards & Nominations
Oceans Inside has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
The Challenge | Trash Cleanup
Sea Serpent
Sea Serpent is an autonomous robotic barrier that collects and contains plastic in the ocean, avoiding its dispersion. With NASA currents data and Amazon Machine Learning Systems we can predict plastic concentrations and guide our barrier towards them.
The problem to solve
Plastics have been an indispensable part of our lives for the last 50 years. As a result, the production and over-consumption of this material has led to a significant increase in global plastic production and subsequent disposal over the last two decades in our landscapes and oceans.
Greenpeace estimated that at least 267 different species have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris.
Plastic kills approximately 100,000 marine mammals annually, millions of birds and fishes.
Removing plastics from the ocean is an urgent need before they degrade into smaller pieces that can be easily eaten by animals, affecting the whole food chain.
The principal problem is the dispersion of plastics in the ocean, at different depths and in different sizes.
There are different passive solutions fighting plastic from spreading in the ocean but they are driven by oceanic and wind currents, making it very hard to guide and move them around. Additionally, the failure of a part makes it necessary to stop the whole barrier to fix it.
We need to develop faster, more agile and effective plastic recovery systems in order to reach every spot in the ocean and be able to free them from trash as soon as possible.
Thanks to companies like P&G and their efforts to solve the plastic problem, not only by removing them from the ocean but also by reusing them to manufacture new products, the health of our oceans has started to improve. But we need to do more, and quicker.
The base technology
Precedent passive barrier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1EAeNdTFHU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYqMLSYcU-o
The barrier floats and accumulates plastic, moved by sea movement and wind action.
The barrier has leaks due to its own passive nature.
Problems:
Our solution
We propose an active barrier. A marine drone barrier composed by small platforms that connect with each other and with a net, forming the shape of a sea serpent that can predate the plastic and adapt to the circumstances of the ocean.
We will predict plastic agglomerations using NASA currents data and direct our barrier towards most plastic-concentrated areas.
Once the platform detects it has collected a sufficient amount of plastic, it closes up and waits until the ship comes to pick it up. Also, it can move towards the coast to facilitate the picking.
Since it’s composed by smaller platforms joined together, it can easily separate and reunite if one of them is damaged, so that the rest can keep on recollecting plastic. Also, it can form barriers of different sizes and adapt to the environment.
The brain of the serpent
NASA satellite information will provide us with ocean streams and satellite images to find the plastics and know the dispersion of it inside the cleaning zone.
https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/OSCAR_L4_OC_third-deg?ids=Measurement&values=Ocean%20Circulation
http://oceanmotion.org/html/impact/garbagepatch.htm
Airbus’ Ocean Finder system will locate the serpent and maritime traffic, supervising the deploys and protecting them from ocean’s dangers.
https://www.intelligence-airbusds.com/en/8231-maritime-monitoring-services
Amazon Artificial Intelligence systems will be used for plastic location, plastic position prediction, image analysis to determine plastic concentration and path planning to recover plastic, optimizing energy usage and time.
The AI (AWS) will need different information layers to work:
- NASA streams information.
- NASA satellite images from the deployment zone.
- Airbus Ocean Finder maritime traffic information.
The deployment (Starting point)
We are going to work in the North Atlantic Ocean since:
- It is an area with a lot of maritime traffic and it is dangerous to have floating elements without control.
- There are no actions being developed there, the Ocean Cleanup Barrier is working in the Pacific Garbage Patch.
- There are near by ports, making it easier to collect the plastic from the serpents.
Resources
GitHub repository: https://github.com/timbergus/sea_serpent_oceans_inside_madrid