I seen on TV where a storm at sea had caused a bunch of gold coins, a gold chain and other gold and silver objects to wash up on shore. These were found by a couple of old retired dudes who roam the beaches with metal detectors for just that reason. When they showed footage of the beach where the coins were found a few days earlier there were now many old men wandering around in all directions with their detectors wavering out before them. I thought “how inefficient” they need to organize and do a sweep of a mile or so of beach. And the next thing to cross my mind was if this gold n stuff washed up on shore wouldn’t it be logical that their was some that didn’t quite make it. I didn’t see no old dudes out in the water.

So my idea is to build a heavy DC powered submersible bot w/ tracks. Like a lil bulldozer equipped with long arms of precious metal detectors. This bot would crawl along a programmed pattern sweeping the beach when there isn’t to may old dudes or it could be used offshore. It could record detected treasure locations via GPS for later collection or possibly retrieve smaller pieces itself. Of course it would need some type of obstacle avoidance system. And probably some kind of camouflage to make it look like a big rock or somethin

In the morning I could release a coupe of these bots a little ways up the beach from where I see flocks of old dudes with detectors gathering. That evening I can meet up with the bot at a predetermined distance down the coast. Where I guess it would wait quietly beneath the waves for a signal from me to emerge with its treasures. Then just put in some charged batteries and let it go for another stretch of beach.

Now I have just seen a program about panning fer gold in Alaska. Maybe a bunch of ant bots that could scurry about while searching creek beds for lil nuggets.
-- llenk, Jan 27 2006

My grammatical snobbery is outweighed by the appeal of this idea. You are absolutely right: the water is the place to look. I also like your idea of using the old dudes as a treasure detection mechanism.

I fully intend to don my wide brimmed hat and ride your bot all day long, waving to the ladies on shore. When I see it the bot has detected something I will be happy to collect it for myself and leave a can of tomato paste where it was. By the end of the day I anticipate I will be glittering with antique gold chains, and I will have no trouble getting a date.
-- bungston, Jan 27 2006


Oops! Sorry for the errors. And I see this idea has been posted before. I think I'll leave it posted because I came by the idea independently thus honestly.
-- llenk, Jan 28 2006



random, halfbakery