Oil Spill-Cleaning Sailing Robot Technology Is Open Sourced by Inventor Cesar Harada

Cesar Harada was so moved by the BP Oil Spill that he quit his dream job, moved to New Orleans, and developed a flexible and highly maneuverable sailing boat that can clean large tracks of oil quickly. Rather than go straight to industry with dollar signs in his eyes, he decided to open source the design. This has allowed the design to take on a life of its own, spawning new use cases. Watch this fascinating Ted Talk in the video panel to the right. The open source project, called Protei, has a Kickstarter page to enable it to get funding. There's more information about Protei here and another fascinating video.