Terranova is lifting land out of flood zones using terraforming robots
terranova.incIt is cool that they don't disturb the surface vegetation or topsoil by simply dumping dredge tailings on the surface. Their method reminds me of injecting expanding foam underneath concrete slabs to lift and level them.
"Flood-prone terrain is then elevated by injecting a wood-based slurry 15–300 feet underground"
This is the part that's odd to me. A wood-based slurry? If there's high organic content in the pump material, won't that decompose (and settle down) over time? I would think that they would want to use something less organic (such as dredge tailings) as their fill material.
They say it's compact within a few hours and doesn't need much time to settle before it's ready to be built on -- but how long does it last?
> Flood-prone terrain is then elevated by injecting a wood-based slurry 15–300 feet underground. > The Ark system is sized to lift an acre by a foot each day.
this sounds like science fiction, it would need to uniformly lift between 18.500 and 370.000 cubic meter of soil/rock by 30cm a day.
300.000 m³ soil/rock would weigh something like 600.000 tonnes and would require ~1.8 GJ to lift by one foot even with zero loss and discounting all other factors apart from lifting the mass.
1.8GJ is pretty much exactly 500kWh? That's not awful in terms of energy, although intuitively I suspect that the real-world energy used would be at least an order of magnitude higher than the gravitational potential energy gain.
500kWh is like a hundred bucks, yes ?
That's the right order of mag yea
Way to miss a buisness opportunity here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/29/climate-...
is the real market for this type of technology. Inject clay - or sand- and create basins, channels and quanats - made from different types of soil that is basically 3d printed into the underground.
Printing foundations for housing in flood prone areas, seems to be a trivial side hussle compared to keeping the foundations of society going.
Why does it need robots? Seems much simpler with a few guys with pumps.
Because then there's no VC money to be made. It needs at least robots. And I bet they were better off, if those robots were "smart" and AI-powered!
Investors, idk. But the proven solutions - dikes and pumping out the water, or pumping slurry - are too boring.
Description of the process from linked site:
Our technology stack starts with Atlas, our mover. Atlas transports Prometheus, our pumping pod, and Vulcan, our drilling pod, around the site. Once Vulcan drills the wells, we deploy an Ark and enough Prometheus pods to complete the lift. Atlas roams the site all day - moving pods, recharging, and mapping terrain in real time. The Ark connects to each Prometheus pod via a slurry transport line. Flood-prone terrain is then elevated by injecting a wood-based slurry 15–300 feet underground.
Is demo available, where can I play this?
1 acre-foot = 1200 cubic meters. That amount of wood chip is needed per day per machine. So perhaps 1000 medium trees worth per day, or 10,000 small trees. If it's waste chip then might make some sense on limited scale. If the conditions inside the mud are anoxic, then the chips don't turn into CO2.
It's also an alternative to wood trunks used as piles + earth/mud in between, like used in Venice. Venice is extremely dense, no space for cars or industry.
This is a god awful website
It would be nice to see one clear image of the actual device, instead of shadowy dramatic camera pans of what looked like an alien landing.
welcome to the modern internet
Terranova, Ark, Prometheus, Atlas, vulcan... + the whole roaster of open positions. Sounds like AInnovation slop on highest temp setting just went on a wild fishing session for the cringiest names in recent scifi blockbusters.
Also, US MIC is probably aroused.
The technology does seem interesting. But what's the monetization model?
It looks like it's marketed towards fitting in to the construction process. So I suppose it could monetize as just another construction contractor? But that would mean effectively just a set amount of money per "job," rather than any sort of truly recurring revenue.
Fascinating problem, incomprehensible solution. How exactly does it work?
The blurb says they pump a biomass slurry underground. It doesn't explain how much or how said biomass is acquired and transported though, nor what happens long term when the biomass breaks down.
somehow, someone, imagines that they can bypass what are almost universal bans on tampering with wet lands, and monitise the poor choices made in the past, where infrastucture was built in tidal and flood zones......the kinds of areas that are becomming, impossible to insure now. all by adding the word robot, to a business that is completly mature, ie: excavation and construction quite odd, big money?, bad scam?, delusinal!,something something AI? only interesting as to how it is still floating, here
Love the melodramatic marketing for a scoop bot.
This is very silly.