With the need for critical battery minerals growing, a company has proved that sustainable ocean mining is possible with a discriminating robot miner.Full of lithium, nickel, and cobalt, the nodules could provide battery manufacturing with a more sustainable supply that doesn’t involve carbon-intensive mining, and avoids the geopolitical difficulties associated with pursuing these minerals in conflict zones or unstable states.They hover above it.”Once hovering above an area of seabed, an AI-powered computer will pick out nodules from other matter, and command a host of horseshoe crab-like grabber arms on the underside of the robot to pick them up and feed them through a hose into a collection chamber.In November, the Eureka 1 dove to depths of 25 feet, successfully differentiated nodules from rocks, and utilized a special buoyancy compensation engine to bring them back to the surface.SIMILAR: Sharp-Shooting Farm Robot Can Treat 500,000 Plants Per Hour With 95% Decrease in Chemical Sprays“This shallow water milestone demonstrates progression of our principles of avoiding serious harm to the seabed by replacing dredging technology with an alternative that prevents biodiversity loss and large sediment plumes” said Oliver Gunasekara, CEO & Co-Founder."