SFEI scientists picked 15 winning names from dozens of public submissions for our stormwater sampling robots. The machines are now called:
Little Sipper
Big Sipper
Missus Sippy
Bob
Flow Rinse & The Machine
Samply McSamplerface
Sip Happens
StormTrooper
Stormin' Norman
Captain Capture
Hazy IPBay
Pre Sipitation
Friend or Flow
The Tubeinator
Hydro the Explorer
The robots stay busy sipping up stormwater samples from creeks across the Bay Area during storms. The samples will help our scientists understand how contaminants reach San Francisco Bay. Hear more about how these robots were created and how they’ll help study water quality from Don Yee, self-proclaimed “mad scientist” and a founder of our robot sampling efforts.
When rainstorms wash contaminants into the Bay, scientists can only sample stormwater in a few places at once. Three years of inventing and testing have led to a solution in the form of 15 briefcase-sized robots, with names like “Captain Capture” and “Missus Sippy,” to slurp up samples without human supervision onsite.
Help Us Name Our New Stormwater Sampling Machines!
The SFEI stormwater team has developed robot samplers to pump up sips of stormwater runoff during rainstorms so we can test for pollution. Now, it’s prime time to name the 15 new samplers that we’ll deploy in the field across the Bay Area this upcoming wet season.
Storms drive emerging contaminants into the Bay
Rainfall washes contaminants from urban landscapes to San Francisco Bay, degrading water quality. In the latest RMP Update, we highlight the findings of a major multi-year screening study to quantify hundreds of emerging contaminants in stormwater.