Cesar Harada believes that ocean currents, the wind and other naturally occuring phenomenon can provide unique inspiration and novel solutions to mankind’s worst disasters, like oil spills and radioactive leaks. A French-Japanese inventor and TED senior fellow, he is the creator of Protei, a revolutionary sailing technology -- featuring a front rudder, flexible hull and open-soure hardware -- that allows for efficient clean up of both oil and plastics from the sea. Currently based in London, Harada recently traveled to Japan and is designing Protei to measure radioactivity along the country's coast.
The general coordinator of the future International Ocean Station, Harada teaches at Goldsmiths University London. A former project leader at MIT, he graduated form the Royal College of Arts Design Interactions in London and worked at the Southampton University Hydrodynamics laboratory on wave energy. Harada has also studied animantion, and his films and installations have been seen at festivals and events across the world, from the United States to Japan.
Tides are strong. They move swiftly, sweeping all toward the shore. But TED Fellows refuse to simply drift with the water. They are innovators, advocates and artists who challenge the status quo and work in the spaces between disciplines. At the second TED Fellows Retreat — held from August 25-28, 2015, and themed “Swimming Against the Tide” — about […]
Continue readingAndrew Bastawrous dreams of a bakery in Nakuru, Kenya, that will not only make delicious treats but raise money for subsidized vision care. Robert Simpson envisions First Responders, a program to make satellite data available to citizen scientists in crisis situations, to guide aid efforts from afar. Cesar Harada wants to create larger prototypes of […]
Continue reading[ted id=1499] In January of 2013, TED Fellow Cesar Harada, inventor of an open-source sailing robot, set sail on a four-month, 14-country round-the-world journey with Unreasonable at Sea, a global innovation accelerator on board a boat. Here, he tells us about how this extraordinary voyage helped crystallize his vision for how his open source sailing robot […]
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