The WatCleaner is a newly designed robot that proposes helping us to clean up the marine ecosystem by intelligently and autonomously removing pollutants such as floating garbage and oil slick.

Now, I really cannot say enough about the brilliance of this idea or the necessity of its assistance in our efforts to reduce the damage done to the greater aquatic landscape, but this descriptive summary from the Japan Design Foundation International Design Competition listing kind of slays me. I’m pretty darn sure this has been translated, though from Japanese or Chinese (given that the submitting country is listed as China) I am not certain. No matter, they certainly get the idea across!

“‘WatCleaner’ is designed to ease water pollution. ‘WatCleaner’ can detect the situation of water and do some cleaning automatically to make the water better. The detectors on the bottom of the WatCleaner can detector the things in water and the floating things(including oil) and then solve the problem by its intellective system. There are many oil absorbent socks stored at the top part of the Watcleaner which can quickly absorb oil in water and do some reclaimtion. The strobe can open after detecting garbage and then absorb garbage with water. After garbage sink down and be forced going into the disintegrator,the water will be sprayed out from the top. Open the cover then the bin and oil-bags can be replaced for use in the future.” source

Great work! I hope that this idea is thoroughly tested and implemented internationally soon!