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Alex DaviesTechnology / Clean TechnologyMay 14, 2012
UC Berkeley Campus Life/Video screen capture
To keep an eye on the quality of the water in California, a team from the
University of California, Berkeley has developed robots that don't just swim
around, they tweet their findings. The Floating Sensor Network is a new
approach to measuring water quality, ditching fixed location sensors for mobile
units that can monitor a variety of locations.
The team, headed by Alexandre Bayen from the Center for Information
Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) released 100 of the
robots into the Sacramento River on May 9. The Sacramento-San Joaquin river
system contains two thirds of the state's fresh water, the majority of
Californians' drinking and irrigation supply.
Because the robots, which are equipped with GPS units, float with the water
(and those with propellers can move freely), they provide a more dynamic and
detailed understanding of the state of the river water. Even better, they use
Twitter to report what they find, under the handle @fsnandroid61.
Tweeting Robots Monitor Water Quality in CaliforniaRivers
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For now, the newly-released robots are measuring salinity, pollution and water
flow. Future versions could be modified to test for various chemicals, and be
released in emergency situations such as levee failures or contaminant spills, to
provide a real-time breakdown what's going on.
Via Discovery News.
Tags: California | Water Conservation | Water Crisis
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1336599095: Android drifter A61 retrieved, welcome back! GPS:628512.7305855866E 4233258.411490787N
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