Cesar Harada (28) is an French-Japanese inventor and entrepreneur. Cesar invented a ground-breaking sailing technology, a boat that changes shape, “Protei”. Originally developed to clean up the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Protei is an Open Hardware project now developed by an international community of scientists, engineers and designers for many other applications such as nuclear radiation sensing off Japan, plastic sensing in the Pacific garbage patch, red tide studies in Mexico and much more. Cesar is also the general coordinator of the future International Ocean Station. Former Project leader at MIT, Cesar teaches Masters in Design & Environment at Goldsmiths University in London. Cesar graduated in 2009 from the Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Arts in London, his collaborative project Open_Sailing received the Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for the [NEXT IDEA].
Dear fellows. We just launch yesterday Protei on Kickstarter.
Please share the link to our Kickstarter on your facebook, or if you know people in - environmental justice
- sailing world
- DIY
- open-source
- engineering
Protei is a fleet of Sailing Drones, developed primarily to collect Oil Spills under Open Hardware licensing. An oil spill drifts down the wind, Protei sails upwind to collect the oil. Everyone is welcome to join, contribute, modify, produce, distribute the design and share their findings.
You can watch the 3 minutes video under to understand the detail of how it works :
The technology is really exciting beyond the fact that it could help for ocean study and cleaning. Have a lovely TED2011!
Thanks to the TED organizers and the wonderful people that supported my application. Most of the projects I work on are collaborative, so this success is not only mine, but belongs to every person that was kind to work with me. Thank you very much. I will do my best to promote our collective actions. This also strongly encourages me to push my efforts in developing Oil Spill cleaning technologies here in the Gulf of Mexico. I hope I will have the pleasure to see you at - TED 2011 : February 28-March 4, 2011: Long Beach, CA, USA. - TED Global : July 11-15, 2011: Edinburgh, Scotland. Again, thanks to all the amazing people I have been working with, let's keep going stronger. I will have the immense privilege to hang out and share ideas with the following brilliant individuals :
James Patten (US) A US-based inventor who is exploring new ways that physical objects can represent and control digital information
Chris Woebken (US / Germany) A German-American interaction designer whose installations create novel relationships between humans and animals
Yara Shaban (Jordan) A Jordanian electrical engineer who's working to engage women in technology education and development in the Middle East
Camille Seaman (US) A Native American photographer whose work captures the harsh beauty of remote Arctic landscapes
Isabel Behncke Izquierdo (Chile / UK / DRC) A Chilean primatologist who studies play behavior among bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Prumsodun Ok (US / Cambodia) A Cambodian-American choreographer and performance artist whose work merges classical Cambodian and modern dance
Sey Min (Korea) A Korean data-visualization designer who works with live data sets to creatively display information
Luke Hutchison (US / New Zealand) A computer scientist and computational biologist from New Zealand who is looking for the structural blueprints of life
Sumit Dagar (India) An Indian interaction designer and filmmaker working on the Braille Phone, a mobile phone for the blind
Kaustuv De Biswas (India/US) A US- and India-based entrepreneur whose experimental design firm, dplay, is building open-source toolboxes for design
Xavier Vilalta (Spain) A Spanish architect whose firm, XV Studio, uses fractal geometry to innovate in the built environment
Suzanne Lee (UK) A British artist and fashion designer who "grows" clothing with bacteria
Skylar Tibbits (US) An American artist and computational architect working on "smart" components that can assemble themselves
Yale Fox (Canada / US) A New York City-based DJ who studies the mystery of why humans love music
Minou Norouzi (UK / Austria / Iran) An Austrian-Iranian moving-image artist whose work reveals the curiosities of ordinary life
Marcin Jakubowski (US) A Polish-American who is starting a new civilization -- from scratch -- in the Midwestern US
Joshua Roman (US) An American cellist who, before his international solo career, was the principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony at age 22
Nina Tandon (US) An American electrical engineer and research scientist who explores how electrical stimulation encourages tissue growth
Sanjana Hattotuwa (Sri Lanka) A Sri Lankan human-rights activist and founder of Groundviews, a citizen-journalism initiative
Mitchell Joachim (US) Professor at NYU and co-founder of Terreform ONE + Terrefuge, non-profit design groups that promotes ecological design in cities
Manu Prakash (India | US) Junior Fellow at Harvard Society of Fellows, physicist and inventor pursuing research in the field of physical biology
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Pakistan | Canada) Documentary filmmaker and founder of The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, an educational institution and heritage center established to preserve Pakistan's history
Awab Alvi (Pakistan) Pakistani dentist, orthodontist and author of Teeth Maestro, a prominent Pakistani political blog
Alanna Shaikh (US | Tajikistan) Global health and development specialist and author of the international development focused-blog, Blood and Milk
Aparna Rao (India) A part of the Bangalore-based artist duo Pors & Rao who works with electro-mechanical systems and interactive installations
Saeed Taji Farouky (Palestine | UK) Documentary filmmaker, photographer and writer focusing on human rights in the Middle East and North Africa
Candy Chang (US) Public installation artist, designer, urban planner, and co-founder of Civic Center, an urban design studio in New Orleans
Esra'a Al Shafei (Bahrain) Bahraini human rights activist + founder of MideastYouth.com, a grassroots digital network facilitating the struggle against oppression in the Middle East & North Africa
Thanks to the TEDxMidAtlantic organizers Dave Troy and Nate Mook for this great event. You can see a shorter and clearer video of the Protei.org presentation without speech hesitations and working animations just below :
A few days ago, I was lucky to be on stage of TEDxMidAtlantic to present Protei, a technology in development I am working on with a bunch of brilliant people (especially Open_Sailing, randomwalks and V2_ folks). Protei would be a Fleet of Oil Collecting Sailing drones. I just made this 7 minutes video that explains how it works (also on youtube if you want to share / embed / rate). I am now working on the collaborative website and the documentation to meet Open Hardware standards - long way to go :) The video of the talk may come up sometimes, meanwhile you have my explanation here :)
This is NOT an Official TED video, it is simply an archive of the TEDxBoston Adventure.
What academic light can two Boston College professors shed on the nation’s largest environmental disaster? What lessons for oil extraction, transport, crisis prevention, and response can be drawn from this present calamity? Meanwhile, can a 2010 TED Fellow on the frontline in the Gulf contribute to the design of autonomous robots that collect oil? Join Boston College Professors Noah Snyder of the Geology and Geophysics department and Zygmunt Plater of the Law School for an interactive briefing on the situation in the Gulf. Professor Snyder is the Director of BC's interdisciplinary Environmental Studies program. Professor Plater served on the State of Alaska Oil Spill Commission during the Exxon Valdez crisis; he has been involved with Alaskan efforts to assist Gulf communities in the aftermath of the BP Gulf blowout and attempts to draw systemic lessons for the future from the Exxon Valdez and the BP blowout. We also will be joined via Skype by Cesar Harada, a former MIT researcher in New Orleans. Ask critical questions about environmental science and law, as well as some of Harada’s other ambitions, from creating the International Ocean Station as an open-source architecture project to crowdsourcing environmental data on the web.
Thanks to John Werner and Grier Tumas.
Devlin Hall, Room 201, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467
0. Acknowledgment 1. Context 2. Previsions of the day 3. Observations and difficulties for local sensing 4. Containment & Sorbent booms, wild life impact 5. Fishermen 6. Politics, Economic & Social 7. Health 8. Mapping 9. Bio-remediation 10. Hurricane season & Long Term Forecast 11. Sailing sorbent boom _11.1. Integrity _11.2. Deductive design _11.3. Three Orders of priority of response _11.4. Functions _11.5. Requirements _11.6. Intercept oil plumes _11.7. Sailing upwind pulling a long sorbent tail _11.8. Steering _11.9 Cheap inflatables, unbreakable, weight distribution _11.10. Self-righting _11.11. Electro-mechanics _11.12. Testing 12. Resigning from my laboratory, making it happen 13. Ethic and vision
1. Context
Field research + TEDxOilSpill + Design proposal "protei"
A month ago I started working at the MIT SENSEable city lab in Cambridge, Boston MA USA. I was asked to lead a research group (about 10 researchers) to develop a technology to address the on-going BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After spending too much time in Cambridge (about 3 weeks) I went to study first hand what was happening in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a report of what I could observe the 24th and 26th of June around Grand-Isle and Venice and some notes of the TEDxOilSpill in Washington DC the 28th of June 2010. Some Images are also from the TEDxOilSpill Expedition and other permitted medias. My notes are made from the standpoint of view of a designer and researcher, so when I write, I focus on the information that may be relevant in the development of a technology and a design that could contribute the remediation of the oil spill. I want to stress that the observations I made these 2 days on the water are no longer possible : since July 5th approaching the buoys closer than 65ft ( 20meters ) has been criminalized and result a $40,000 penalty, and could be classified as a Class D felony. More than ever we need reliable informations about the current crisis, and paradoxically it is increasingly difficult to access information...
3. Observations and difficulties for local sensing
These are the main spots we were able to sample oil contaminated water and oil accumulated on the containment booms.
The water is very busy, so many boats, skimmers, converted shrimpers, barges, floating structures, static structures.
Each black point you are seeing on this map below is NOT the trace of an oil spill. Each point is an oil platform. Read again, yes. Only one 1 of these point failed, creating the most environmental trauma in the history of the continent. The Gulf of Mexico is "dangerous mess".
Image via <Chafic Kazoun>
And if you drive on land you will see the same thing : crude oil refineries everywhere. You will understand why Louisiana seemed to be more controlled by the oil industry than by the state itself. 30% of the USA needs in oil are covered in the Gulf of Mexico. About 50% of the US fishing industry happens in these fertile waters...
Back in Barataria Bay : it is very difficult to observe oil sheens or smell them (with our boat engine). Surface observation is difficult and expensive ; if we were to build a fleet of unmanned semi-autonomous drones, low cost local sensing is unlikely. We may rely on aerial observation (as the video below shows), high-altitude NASA reports, NOAA daily reports, crowd-sourced map, weather balloon shoreline reports and imagery mash-ups.
We did not have to sail very long to find one of these.
Accordng to an expert we met, this emulsion is typical of crude oil that has been treated with highly toxicoil dispersant Corexit EC9500A and EC9527A, produced by NALCO, a firm closely related to BP...
From experience, I can say that the contact with contaminated oil had no immediate effect on my skin. It is only 3 hours after I experienced very strong itching. At TEDxOilSpill, marine toxicologist Prof Susan Shaw from the Marine Environmental Institute confirmed effect of corexit to "dilate tissues and cause strong itching and perhaps skin damages".
These are my hands
These are my legs ... NOT ! I m much more hairy than that + I don't varnish my nails (forgot one!) to visit a spill! Skin rash and blisters after wading and walking in Mobile Bay, Alabama, on May 11. [source]
One of the main problem of the dispersant is that is changes the consistency of oil, and the droplets end up everywhere in the water column as this little experiment below demonstrates.
It is very difficult to state how much of the oil is in surface on in the water column. In fact a large underwater plumes have been observed by Sam Champion and Phillpe Cousteau JR (video below). Prof Susan Shaw also dived in the spill and reported air pollution that "feels like my throat was on fire". The spill is not only damaging the water, but also the already polluted air, Louisiana Bucket Brigade and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network has been monitoring air degradation before the oil spill. Between 10 and 75% of crude oil mass evaporates in ambient temperature, so monitoring air quality may be of high relevance to understand the extend of the incident.
Many of the islands we sailed around are natural reserves, mostly bird sanctuaries. This is the worst time of the year it could happen : "love is in the air" as Phillipe Cousteau JR said, this is the period of reproduction of many animals, including aquatic mammals like dolphins. Birds are the most spectacular victims of the spill, but with the extensive use of dispersants and the natural change of consistency of oil, a strong impact can be expected at the bottom, on the sea floor where it doest strongly damage invertebrates habitat. All the food web is affected, crabs, plankton, small, big fishes and ultimately humans.
Even if many natural reserves are protected by containment (red or yellow) and sorbent booms (white - clean, brown - saturated with oil), they are very affected by the spill. Here, the low/high tide brought the spill high enough to cover the island.
This was the cleanest containment buoy we came across. Everything is sticky and smelly.
Sorbent booms react very differently to different densities of oil :
1- This buoy just below was exposed to very liquid oil, oil is absorbed all the way to the heart of the boom, the weight increased enormously. In average a 3 meters long sorbent boom, 13 cm in diameter, absorbs up to 113 liters of liquid oil (absorbing about 25 times its own weight), for a cost of ~100$. That's 37 liters per meter, costing 33$ per meter. In large quantities the cost can surely drop. Important observation : the buoy saturated with liquid oil increase greatly in weight, at the point that some buoys sink in the water (!!!).
2- this other buoy (below) was exposed to very thick oil : only the surface is coated with thick oil, the heart of the buoy was still completely dry and white, unaffected. The buoy is very light.
In order to make sure the both - buoys filled with liquid oil (heavy) | and | - buoys covered with thick oil (light) I put both samples to dry for 3 days. Neither of them dried, so we could confirm that it is oil, and not another aqueous solution.
One of the main problem of the polypropylene sorbent buoys is that they are difficult to hold in place when clean and light, they fly around and get tangled. When they are saturated they dive and mostly disappear under the level of the water.
Since the islands are inhabited by a large population of birds, a lot of organic materials fly around the island, branches, leaves, algae and feathers that are the best organic oil absorbent known (like human hair), all mixed with oil.
When too close to the shore, buoys get washed on the rocks and get wrecked out.
These days, they are installing these huge barges anchored to the bottom with vertical trees. They pump the oil that runs across the surface in these massive trucks. This is only possible in shallow waters in moderate tropical storm conditions and there is a limited number of barges available, so it is great idea for this particular location, but doesn't really scale up. I also saw immense metal booms, basically steel tubes floating around.
5. Fishermen
As the sun comes down, oil skimmers are heading back home. Unmanned cleaning vehicles may not need to rest and could work continuously. I tried to speak to fishermen-cleaners and volunteers in Venice and Grand Isle but nobody would speak, too afraid to loose their jobs or expose their families. Nobody looked happy. FIshermen are generously paid by BP may they be collecting oil or not, many of them are being paid even if they stay in the harbor I was said. There is such a strange relation between BP and the coast guards as well, why anyone would still want to hide the truth when it is all about working together the clean the Gulf? What is left to lie about?
You can see that shrimping boats are using the same combination of containment and sorbent booms.
At TEDxOilSpill Latosha Brown underlined the affects of the oil spill is not only environmental but also directly on the people living in the area, energy trade, seafood, the culture of the region, tourism and national security. According to Brown "BP is acting like a superstate" and another recent leak of information brought out the fact that many Vietnamese fishermen, representing up to 50% of fishermen in Lousiana, were being paid less than the half of white and black american fishermen, adding racial discrimination on top of this all.
I know little about the social and economical effect of the oil spill on the US economy, because I focus on design. Many argued it was BP's fault, other pointed their fingers to the Obama administration, and some humbly declared that we were all collectively responsible for this, each of us being involved in oil consumption.
7. Health
Similarly, the health effects of the oil spill differ greatly if you are reading BP, local hospital or NGOs reports. The wikipedia article offers a satisfying range of the different viewpoints. As the demand in oil spill cleaners goes up, alarming articles state that most Alaskan oil spill Exxon Valdez clean up workers are now dead, with an average life expectancy of 51 years, dropping by 27 years US national life expectancy (78.4 years old). Still the cleaners have been required by BP not to wear respirators to "avoid spreading hysteria". Corporation public image matters much more than cleaners lives.
You dont need to work as BP cleaner to be affected, if you simply live in exposed area near the spill, or if you happen to be downwind on downstream, you will be affected. Many have reported that it has been raining oil inlands, farmers only start to report the effects of the oil spill on food culture.
If cleaning oil is too dangerous, a least dangerous activity is mapping, air, water, sediment and waste sampling, or simply reporting via SMS, MMS, email, posting pictures, videos what you see, smell or feel (symptoms)...
There are so many initiatives down there, you can also donate money or equipment, so many things you can do locally or from a distance.
9. Bio-remediation
There is a debate about "mother nature taking care of balancing this mess". The process described at the TEDxOilSpill by Prof. Ronald Atlas called bioremediation showed that fertilizer application can hasten the rates of oil removal following oil spillages. He has worked on several major oil spills and explained that dramatic oil spill effects may be negligible in about 10 years. Local population victim of the Exxon Valdez oil spill contradict the "negligibleness" Prof Atlas advocates 20 years after the spill. Also the Deepwater Horizon is happening at a much larger scale than the Exxon Valdez.
The hurricane season has already started, making the oil containment effort nearly impossible in stormy days. In 2005, hurricane Katrina path was exactly where Deepwater Horizon oil spill origin is located. This year forecast predicts an intense tropical storm activity. Population evacuation plans are now set, trying to not forget anybody behind. This year has the worst weather forecast since 2005, remember Katrina (175 mph - 280 km/h peaking winds!) :
We can expect tropical storms to transport oil inland. we cant have humans risking their lives on the water during the storm, and If we make drones, they must be hurricane ready.
On the other hand complex currents and winds make predictions very difficult, and the situation out of control, especially concerning less visible underwater plumes.
At MIT I tried to incorporate all these variables in the design of an oil recovery system. Unfortunately, in my department, the SENSEable city lab, my supervisors declared "it is too late to do anything for the on-going oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico", and they decided to focus on "future technologies for future oil spill" with very complex expensive robotics, absolutely wanting to include MIT developed oil-absorbing nano-fabric that may only be ready in 5 years for an estimated cost of 1000$ per square meter.
I believe it is still time to develop technologies to clean up the oil spill. We must try.
I have resigned from the MIT SENSEable city lab 4 days ago. It was a hard decision to make because : If you have MIT students and staff brain power, technical facilities and world respect, there is no better place to invent and get supported to implement a solution for the Oil spill.
I am moving to the Gulf of Mexico next week. I want to work with people that also want to work for real. I believe I will be more useful there, either developing the following design, or, contributing to on-going researches and initiatives.
11.2. Deductive design
The deductive research process and design proposal I am presenting below has been denied by my ex-lab because it is not a "future technologies for future oil spill", but an idea we may be able to implement as a product within a few weeks. I don't know yet how well/bad it would work, we need to test.
BP has already been sending many underwater vehicles to shut off the well valves, without success. Order 2 solution, capturing oil straight out of the gusher (ie. Top kill hat) are not entirely effective but they can significantly diminish the amount of crude before it reaches the surface. Both order 1 and 2 are achievable only if you have access to the origin of the spill (only BP), a fleet of underwater vehicles and an important budget, which is not the case for most, therefore I am focusing on order 3 solutions - collect the oil spill in the environment.
11.4. Functions
This is the chain of events necessary to make an autonomous oil collecting robot.
1. Sense oil As described earlier in the post, from experience on site, visual sensing of oil is very unreliable since oil comes in so many different concentrations and visibilities, from almost invisible surface sheen to thick brown "paste", to semi-solid tar balls. Video equipment (camera + pattern recognition to pilot the machine) is unreliable and expensive if the processing of the information was made on board. If the process of the image is made on land, after long distance video signal broadcast, the reliability and reactivity of the system would quite low and the cost very high. We use Fluorometer in ROV, but if you want to mass produce this machine, it might increase the price too much. If the machines are cheap enough to be produced in a great number we may rely on GPS : simply store the departure point and aim at one point in the center of the predicted spill, performing oil collecting maneuvers.
2. Collect oil There are many ways to collect oil, but as time is pressing I choose to re-confgure the technology we already have and that works best. What everyone's using both passively to surround and protect islands, as well as actively being pulled by oil skimmers is a combo of containment (yeallow or red) and sorbent boom (white when clean and light, brown when saturated with oil mostly under the surface). We can use the change of buoyancy of the boom (on top of water when empty - mostly under water surface when filled) to trigger a serie of switches that would say "empty" / "full" and send back the robot where it came from.
3.Extract oil In the future we can think of continuous extraction (watch video), but that would mean the machine is equipped of a "washing machine" that extracts oil and stores it in several tankers after processing without affecting how well the boat would sails (balance).
4. Process (crude) oil Processing crude oil is the refinery process. Just as the previous step, ideally this process happens as continuous distillation. Refining crude oil is a complex and dangerous process, that requires monitoring and present high risks of explosion, high maintenance, elaborate machinery, high cost. As far as I know, mass-producing mini-mobile refineries would be very expensive and could potentially transform every oil-collecting-robot into a mini oil spill of its own.
5. Re-purpose oil If a unit is capable of sensing, collecting, extracting and processing oil, it would be producing combustible (stored energy) on one hand and raw material (like asphalt) in the other hand. You don't want to use the oil you collect and process as main combustible to move your machine around, because for long periods your machine may not be exposed to enough oil to propel itself. Another propulsion system, like a sail, uses what is almost available and free all the time, wind. Similarly you don't want to accumulate and carry around asphalt or highly toxic materials.
MIT SENSEable city lab fro wants to make a autonomous robot that makes the 5 steps into one machine, so it is a very long term plan in the context of low cost swarm (many) robotics. I want to implement the technology now, because we need it now.
Locally sensing oil is expensive and kind of unnecessary if you have good predictions of oil spill (esc. step 1). You would only want to extract oil on board of the machine if you want to process it (refinery) but this is a very complex, dangerous and expensive process (esc. step 3,4,5). The quantity of oil that needs collecting is so immense that we need a technical solution that is simple and would scale up easily, so we can only focus on event 2. : collect oil.
11.5. Requirements
Collect a lot of oil, bring to a safe collector : ultimate goal, collected on land or to a large "mothership".
Unmanned : to avoid exposing human cleaners to toxic oil and gases. To operate day and night without interruption. To operate in hurricane conditions.
Self righting : boats do tip over. Only buoys, which have low maneuverability passive structures don't tip over.
Self steering : the machine needs to have high maneuverability, especially the capacity to go upwind, where the oil is coming from and stretches in long sheens.
Unbreakable : hurricane-ready design. Doesn't mean titanium strong, but perhaps lightweight and flexible
Autonomous : if we have electro-mechanic and electronic on board, the machine should have comfortable autonomy probably provided by solar panels and batteries.
Cheap : we have to protect hundreds of miles of coast, more than 6'500 km2 of spill, the machine needs to be simple, robust , reliable, cheap and easy to manufacture in order to scale up and deploy.
11.6. Intercept oil plumes
Current oil skimmers cut a clean line through a sea of oil. Even A whale super skimmer do not offer a large capture area while consuming vast amount of fuel to move around pulling booms.
The bigger picture is that in most case long oil plumes are going downwind, with superficial surface currents and waves. Therefore the best way to capture an oil plume is to go upwind. We must use the forces available. Use the force of the hurricane to capture the oil spill. If we go upwind and tack left and right, we may oppose the natural flow (near perpendicular interaction) and collect a fair amount of oil in the successive folds.
Now if we have many of these units we can work on the behavior and trajectories that allow more oil interception.
11.7. Sailing upwind pulling a long sorbent tail
So, in the end, it is about engineering a "propulsion head" to pull a long line of sorbent boom. Only a hydrodynamic profile could efficiently sail upwind.
11.8. Steering
If you are pulling a long tail, you are adding significant drag to your structure. A classical boat has an articulated rudder at the back to steer, and a center board at the center that acts like a pivot. Since we want to add the longest tail possible, steering at the back gets increasingly inefficient, so the idea here is steer at the front, not with a rudder but by changing the general geometry of the boat. It works as a series of vertebrae and required only a cable to steer.
Penguins (swimming vertebrate) and the fabulous AirPeguin by Festo uses this principles in 3 dimensions (also up and down):
11.9 Cheap inflatables, unbreakable, weight distribution
Inflatables are cheap, easy to mass produce, safe (they rarely cause damage in collisions), lightweight and of course float very well. In order to distribute mass and adjust buoyancy inflating with :
air : for the sail
water : for the hull
sand : for the ballast
may provide a very reliable, cheap and safe design.
11.10. Self-righting
In a hurricane context (winds peaking at 280km/h) it is vain to oppose wind. It is preferable to tip on the side momentarily, the sail would naturally "stick" to the water, meanwhile having enough ballast at the bottom to have the boat self-right to navigate again when there is bearable wind. A passive and flexible system.
11.11. Electro-mechanics
Steering such machine would only requires 2 winch step-motors : one to bend the "nose" of the boat left or right ; another one to sheet the main sail. We could add to the machine the high visibility flashlight at the top of the mast, the GPS receiver, an accelerometer, a circuit board for general control and to store the start point and destination coordinates. All electronics may be sealed dry near the mast by the center of the "boat". A large battery, recharged on land and solar panel maintained may provide energy for the electro-mechanics.
11.12. Testing
I made a quick and dirty test machine that was quite promising.
We (with David & Eugene Lee + Sey Min -> Korea Power team!) added to this test model a lot of stones at the bottom for ballast to sail in the Charles river in Cambridge MA. The mast was not only inflated, it was re-enforced with plastic plumbery tube.
Next steps : pulling a long tail and testing oil collecting trajectories + more extensive test of front steering.
12. Open source technology and manufacturing
There is still a lot of collaborative research to be done on the whole project "Protei" to see if it is a competitive proposition to collect oil, but in order to insure the future of the research.
This does mean that everyone is invited to use, make commercial use of the technology, but they must aknowledge they are building on top of our open-source technology licensing and themselves share their designs and advancements. This methods allows collaboration as well as commercial development of the technology, because we will definitely need more than one company to produce this, and a lot of caring clever people to develop and fork the technology.
You can follow and contribute to the development of Protei onhttp://protei.org. Hosted by Open_Sailing. Feel free to contact me <contact [at] cesarharada [dot] com> for more informations and/or to get involved.
As I said earlier, I resigned from MIT SENSEable city lab in Boston to move to the Gulf of Mexico where I believe I will be more useful to either develop this technology or contribute to existing projects. I am now looking for :
partner experts, university, inventors, sailors, RC boat hobbyist groups
a sail boat to test the idea and take the prototype to the oil spill
a workshop around New Orleans to fabricate more test models, ideally close to the water
contacts with local authorities to get permission to navigate and test prototypes
safety equipment (Hazmat + respirators) for our crew
Thank you very much for reading this long article, I hope it helped understanding the extend of the environmental challenge we are facing, and re-gain enthusiasm in the idea that we can solve this problem together.
From pollution-eating robots to abstract animated films, TED Fellow Cesar Harada is involved in an ocean of projects. He was able to squeeze in this interview with TED, where he talks about architecture, his love of the sea and a special cartoon cat.
What are the most important things you're working on right now?
The project I'm working on right now is called the "Energy Animal." I had the first iteration when I was working for the British government Renewable Energies Department at the University of Southampton in the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory.
I built a prototype that makes energy from the waves, the wind, and the sun simultaneously. It's a device that can be working in any type of weather condition, anywhere. It doesn't necessarily produce a lot of energy, but produces it steadily.
I'm still working very much on the World Environment Action. It's in coordination with Ushahidi[another TED Fellows project]. Three weeks ago I was in Kenya working on this environmental monitoring software that I'm going to use in the next application.
Since two weeks ago I am a researcher at MIT SENSEable City Lab and I am working on the project I mentioned before called Energy Animal. We're trying to build devices that make energy while collecting pollution -- apprehending pollution as a resource. Originally I was commissioned by MIT to collect the North Pacific Garbage Patch, but I've been redirected to work on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, so now I am designing a machine to collect oil. It will use oil as a combustible, as a gasoline fuel to actually move around. The idea is to make autonomous robots that would swarm around and collect garbage or different types of pollution.
I'm designing not one specific device, but a floating open source design "framework" so it can generate many other boats for different applications. It can be used for the oil spill, or the North Pacific Garbage Patch or even for fresh water to purify, for example, the Laguna Venice, where the prototype will be presented for the International Architecture Biennale to represent the MIT SENSEable City Lab.
I am now pushing the lab staff to help me make this robot self-replicating: a robot that can fabricate its own children. Since we are collecting a lot of raw material, the best use we can make of that material is fabricating more robots to accelerate the cleaning. So that means that you make a robot, and if it accumulates energy and raw material, it can build, if you want, a baby -– the same of its own. So it's very futuristic. That is also why we are not working at solving this precise problem but more for longer-term.
We have problems that are very big, like the North Pacific Garbage Patch, and we never have the money to actually build an entire fleet. So we'd rather build a fleet that builds itself!
How will one device feed off of completely different types of pollution?
What I was saying about "framework" -- it's very much like the evolutionary process. You can't have a robot that does everything. The idea is that we build a framework, for example from a simple kind of boat, and you can swap organs. So say that you go for the oil spill -- you will have some oil combustion chamber. In Venezia you will have some anaerobic digester so it will make energy from gas -- methane, propane -- from organic waste digestion, and also create fertilizer. And if it's in the case of the North Pacific Gyre, it will collect the plastic, process some of it, and some will be reused to fabricate more raw materials. So the robots themselves will be made of plastic.
You have different labs like the "Energy Animal" that make up your overarching project, Open_Sailing. Tell me more about this project.
The purpose of Open_Sailing is to build an International Ocean Station. That's really the main target. Whatever the intermediary experiments we're doing, the objective is the International Ocean Station. So if NASA has as a target to explore space, Open_Sailing's would be to explore the ocean, and to do so, involving probably inventing this new generation of devices.
ABOVE: Cesar and a Nomadic Ecosystem float prototype
You compare your project to the International Space Station. A lot of expertise, money and time were invested in that. You've said you expect to achieve something comparable with a fraction of the resources. Why are you convinced you can succeed?
The first reason is that many, many people have access to the sea, so the testing ground is near us. Secondly, I'd like to actually probably moderate what I said because I said this when I was quite early in the research. And a few days after I wrote these words for the first time, I went to meetProfessor Masubuchi in the MIT Center for Ocean Engineering. He happens to also have been the chief welding engineer of NASA for the rocket that went on the moon.
We had a long discussion and I asked him why we don't have already an International Ocean Station if we already have an International Space Station. And he told me that it's because the International Ocean Station is much more complicated to make. And that is also why he himself was transferred from NASA to ocean engineering –- because the ocean is the next frontier.
Space is empty, cold, and the gravitational forces are very predictable, depending on where you are in space. You can deploy these very huge solar panels, like 100-meter long solar panels, with almost no support because there is little gravity. It's mostly empty space, it's cold and there's no acidity.
But in the ocean you have the mechanical action of the waves, some of which impact can be tens of tons per square meter. You have salinity, UV, winds, strong currents all the time, and the conditions are changing very, very quickly. In other words the surface of the ocean is very, very difficult. And on the bottom you have extreme high pressures, darkness….
How did you move from architecture to designing ocean structures?
I'm not a qualified architect, I didn't graduate from architecture. My family is in construction. Most of my uncles are structure engineers in Japan, which is subject to a lot of earthquakes, so since I'm a kid I've been building houses and participating in architectural plans for buildings. When I was in Kenya, again, I was construction manager, so I'm not an architect officially but I'm an architect in the fact. Also my father actually is a professor in an architecture school. These 2 last years I was assistant of the Architect Usman Haque, Angel Borrego Cubero and the biochemist Natalie Jeremijenko.
I've always been passionate about the ocean. Since I was a kid –- before I could walk -- I was a very good baby swimmer [laughs]. Actually the first time I went to the hospital, it was because when I was four years old, I was left alone and I went smashing myself in the waves. I was found on the beach side, my lungs full of sand and my nose cavity full of pebbles. So I had to have my first operation to remove the pebbles out of my nose when I was four.
ABOVE: Cesar on his boat, Vela
And since I'm passionate about sailing and windsurfing … that is also why I'm in MIT, because a few minutes from the office I can sail. So 3 or 4 times a week I am windsurfing and sailing now. I'm really happy here.
Let's talk about World Environment Action.
World Environment Action is a website that is crowdsourcing environmental data. The idea is that to be getting everybody to participate to create the most reliable and multi-platform service. We are using Ushahidi, which is a crisis reporting system, so people can use their mobile phones, they can send just a simple SMS, MMS, they can make a phone call, or they can go directly on the website w-e-a.org and report an environmental problem.
The idea is very simple. If you are passing in front of some environmental damage, you can just take a picture with your mobile phone and you upload it to the website, and almost in real time –- maybe just a couple of hours after because we have to moderate every post -- then you will be able to see this environmental report, amongst a lot of others. So the idea is that everybody can become an environmental activist. You don't have to be part of an NGO, or you don't have to be part of a government, or claim that you belong to anybody, you can just actively report and take action against environmental problems.
Ushahidi was started by two TED Fellows. Can you tell us more about that partnership?
The whole TED experience instantly bounded a TED family that one can only be delighted to be part of. I was looking for partners in software development and environmental monitoring, I foundErik Hersman and the Ushahidi project. I was looking for good programmers, I found Jessica Colaco. Together Erik and Jessica are building the iHub in Nairobi, the Kenyan innovation incubator that will soon be the hottest place in mobile application development in East Africa.
ABOVE: Jessica Colaco, Erik Hersman and Cesar Harada: A TED Fellows Coalition
I brought them an ambitious project clearly answering the question TED asked: "What the World Needs Now." The answer: a powerful environmental governance. We are currently looking for partners and contributors for this world-changing project. We can make it happen, together.
Let's talk about the films you've produced.
Films used to be my goal, but now I consider them only a way to share ideas. So I actually studied animation film until I was 23. I made a couple of things but now when I look back at them I feel they are very intimate and poetic.
Maybe three weeks ago I just republished a film that I re-masterized. One is called Arvo Part -- it's a remix of Arvo Pärt, one of my favorite composers, and it's really abstract. The second is calleddisponible (available), a roadtrip I made in nature on a boat I fabricated for the purpose of the film.
What cartoon character are you most similar to?
I wish Doraemon! Doraemon is a mechanical cat. He's such an important character. Basically he's a big lazy cat and he's really funny and ingenious. He has a big pocket in front of him like on his belly here, and he always pulls out the craziest gadgets from it. He's the best product designer in history.
Anything else before we wrap up?
I have to stress that a lot of what I do is very propositional. The International Ocean Station is a very, very big endeavor, and the World Environment Action is the same –- it's a very ambitious project. What MIT has asked me to solve are global-scale problems.
Look at me, I'm just a little guy, I do my best, I don't sleep very much already, I don't know how much I can do for the world, but I have lots of ideas and I try hard. I really consider myself a contributor. Even if in my lifetime none of the stuff that I'm talking about and working on everyday exists before I die, it's ok. If I can contribute to the fact that it comes into existence one day, for me it's a very big satisfaction.
The geekiest girls of Kenya is right under your eyes (+1 lucky stalker heheh) meeting @*IHub. Here you got Angela Nicole, Lillian Nduati, Linnet Quamboka, Judith Adem Owigar, Muthoni, Jessica Colaco. I must soon do their logo inspired from Carol hairstyle (!!!). The group is called Akirachix (Akira + Chicks) and is under construction too, but the idea is to empower Kenyan tech-ladies to take over and help each other. Nice initiative of the fantabulous Jessica Colaco (TED Fellow 2009), meeting once every 15 days or so. Pretty nerdy round here O_O ;p
The simply excellent method of Dennis Hong: 1. Sparkle idea -> database 2. Brainstorm (no criticism, refinement) 3. Education 4. Work smart, work hard, have fun!
As defined by Michio Kaku : - Type-1 civilization : is capable of harnessing the entire power of a planet, and dominate its processes, including its weather, geothermal energy, etc. It should be able to construct facilities anywhere it wants to on the planet. - Type-2 civilization : is capable of harnessing the power of its local star, and subsidiary planets. - Type-3 civilization can become inter-stellar/multi-stellar, capable of expanding across multiple star systems, and eventually the entire galaxy. (Star Trek is one exemple of Type-III Civilization) We are currently at the zero-point-something mark on this scale.As a 2010 TED fellow, we are collectively required to adress the question "what the world needs now?".
The world leaders had the same requirements at the COP15 Copenhagen summit. Each of us has the opportunity everyday in each of our most insignificant actions - they are significant.
What a humbling question.
The first thing that pops to my mind is how difficult it is to link that different scales of actions : the global political decision and the everyday individual behavior changes in little gestures. Maybe we need to proceed the other way round this time?
Would it be possible? A peaceful working global interoperability?
- Knowledge : People need to know about it.
- Desire : the proposed world need to desirable, ethical social model.
- Capacity : everyone needs to be able to participate in their own ways within earth limits.
I am working on this with this nascent project : the World Environment Organization and I am looking for programmers and lawyers for that (the website is very very bad for now, lots of work to do, contact me).
But the real question is : is a Type 1 civilzation even desirable?
The type 1 civilization Michio Kaku describes has :
- a type 1 language : english (an everyone speaks another native land language).
- a type 1 monetary system (a global currency + capitalism).
- a type 1 political system (democracry + republic).
hummmm...... I think only americans agree with themselves on this. What does a chinese, an indian, a brazilian, cuban, french, arabic, persian, african person think about supremacy? Portuguese, English, French, Japanese have attempted it not long ago, Americans are doing it now... I think this "type 1 thinking" contradicts with the values of tolerance and cohesive forces necessary for the making a durable type 1 civilization. Haven't all empires collapsed? Diversity is the driving force for competition, evolution and civilizational progress, we can't wish for ONE dominant system, there wouldn't be any more progress, just an unstoppable normative force. Myself being a japanese descent I am very surprised Kaku advocates a totalitarian type 1 civilization, as if plurality wasn't thinkable, only American domination... How sad...
As Michio Kaku describes it, the type 1 civilization is a civilization of absolute control : control over the planet, processes, including its weather, geothermal energy. So it is human domination over "nature". Which is also a questionnable desire. And Kaku suggests that's only achievable with a type 1 language, 1 monetary and 1 political system. I think this way of thinking is dangerous. Think about linguistics : why do we have so many words, so many languages, so many dialects... Why do Eskimos have so many different words to describe "snow"? Why do we have every week new artificial computer and artificial languages? Diversity is a fact, and is necessary. Kaku suggests each will have his/her own local language + english, but the fact is that local languages tend to disappear on the long term.
Kaku interestingly simplified the options for accessing the type 1 civilization conditional to :
- positive "integration forces" with tolerance, multi-cultural fabric on one hand ;
- and on the other hand "disintegration forces" : "weapons of mass destruction, germ weapons, terrorism..."
I think it is a good simplification, it does help : we need to concentrate on minimizing the disintegration forces, and maximizing integration forces. On this we can all agree, but it only is valid if no country has a domination desire... and he himself clearly declares he has!
Kaku also takes the example of the European Union, and falsely explains its inception as a counter-measure to the North American Free Trade Agreement. It is not true! Europe was born after the war as a space of political cooperation, to ensure peace - and later only - to improve economic condition. Thanks to American help on this, by the way.
The US is very different, it is a very recent rich colonized land, from which the natives have largely been subject to what many qualify a genocide. Europe is a land of a much higher diversity of languages, economies and political systems than the US today, and according to the recent economic crisis, Europe happens to be more stable and resilient. Still the US is now a dominant economic, political, military and cultural entity.
The US alone wont make the entire world access this type 1 civilization by forcing its normative military power, economy, language and values. There will be no global acceptance of the US type 1 civilization project. That would create too much friction. I like to think civilization type 0 transitioning to a civilization type 1 as the moment a plane breaks the sound barrier, or brakes itself. (video explaining sonic boom).
If our "civilization type 0" tries to transition to "civilization type 1" without enough velocity and cohesion it will fail like the early supersonic flights dramatic attempts. And we got only one chance!!!
We wont transition to type 1 civilization by forcing the entire world to speak the same language, use the same currency, have the same political ideas.
We wont transition to type 1 civilization by dominating the nature.
We wont transition to type 1 civilization with our actual political democratic system inability to change efficiently individual everyday little gestures.
We wont transition to type 1 civilization if each of us doesn't have the knowledge, desire and capacity to be on that flight.
I have a dream that we will all enter type 1 civilization with cohesion in our diversity of languages, currencies, political ideas.
I have a dream that we will enter type 1 civilization in harmony with nature, not dominating it.
I have a dream that each of our everyday gestures would reflect our many better political systems.
I have a dream that, not only a rich minority, but all of us will enter type 1 civilization with the capacity, knowledge and desire to, in their own ways.
