Sustainable Deep-Sea Harvesting Robots
Impossible Metals Experiments with Robotic Innovations
Impossible Metals is a Canadian engineering start-up and recently, it made headlines with its innovative robot that can reportedly harvest deep-sea metals like cobalt and nickel—materials necessary for the manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries, for example—in sustainable ways. Impossible Metals completed its first proof of concept in shallow waters in Canada's Georgian Bay. However, there is still worry from scientists that no matter what we do, deep-sea mining will always have a harmful effect on the environment. The worries are well-founded as deep-sea mining is not a widespread practice yet it is "on the verge of becoming a reality." Concerns about loss of biodiversity and pollution are some of these worries. Impossible Metals, however, says that it is working on a design solution to "minimize this problem."
Trend Themes
1. Sustainable Deep-sea Mining - Opportunities for designing eco-friendly harvesting robots to extract metals from deep-sea in an environmentally friendly way.
2. Electric Vehicle Industry Materials - Opportunities for extracting cobalt and nickel materials for electric vehicle batteries using autonomous deep-sea harvesting robots.
3. Sustainable Engineering Solutions - Opportunities to innovate sustainable engineering solutions to minimize environmental harm in deep-sea mining and preserve biodiversity.
Industry Implications
1. Robotics Industry - Robotics industry has an opportunity to innovate deep-sea harvesting robots that can extract metals in an eco-friendly and sustainable way.
2. Electric Vehicle Industry - Electric vehicle industry has an opportunity to explore sustainable methods to extract cobalt and nickel materials for their batteries.
3. Mining Industry - The mining industry has an opportunity to adopt sustainable and eco-friendly solutions that minimize the environmental harm in deep-sea mining and preserve biodiversity.