Smugglers have been transporting contraband over the sea for centuries, and it’s become a favored transportation method for many reasons. For starters, it’s easier to transport goods across the sea than it is by land, but more importantly, it’s hard to patrol and entire coastline. However, thanks to MIT, it’s about to become much harder to smuggle contraband through a port thanks to a tiny, submersible robot.
The robot was designed by an MIT grad student and her professor. The robot, which is slightly smaller than a football, uses ultrasound to inspect ships, looking for false hulls and props shafts that smugglers often use to hide illegal imports from regular, human-powered inspections. The robot uses a unique pump-powered propulsion system that makes it almost impossible to detect, so smugglers won’t even now that they’re being inspected.
“It’s very expensive for port security to use traditional robots for every small boat coming into the port. If this is cheap enough – if I can get this out for USD 600, say – why not just have 20 of them doing collaborative inspection? And if it breaks, it’s not a big deal. It’s very easy to make,” said Sampriti Bhattacharyya, the grad student who designed the robot with her adviser Ford Professor of Engineering Harry Asada.
Read more about the story at MIT News.
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